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Do you want to keep making the same mistakes? Keep doing the same thing over
and over again. The PMBOK® Guide defines Lessons Learned as “The learning gained from performing the project. Lessons
Learned may be identified at any point.” It is not commonly understood that
learning can come from successes where we did something creative or imaginative
and we would like to see it repeated on future projects, but learning can come
from failures where something did not meet our expectations and we want to
improve and not make the same mistake again. While we would like to think most of the learning comes from our successes, the
reality is that most of the learning comes from our failures.
Before formally closing a project holding a lessons-learned review meeting, is critical for a couple of reasons:
- You want to avoid repeating mistakes
- You want to repeat those things that worked extremely well.
- You want to improve the probability of balancing the triple constraint so as to not have
cost or schedule overruns on future projects.
You should conduct a lessons-learned
session as soon as possible after the completion of the project while everyone's
memories are still fresh. Sessions can range from two team members meeting to
reach a consensus about the various issues to highly structured meetings
conducted by non-project facilitators who employ formal questionnaires. No
matter what form it takes, it is always better to hold a lessons-learned meeting
with all stakeholders than not, even if the meeting is a burden on those
involved.
It’s best to do the survey in a meeting setting with all stakeholders. One person’s comment could trigger some thoughts in someone else. (1)Focus on three key questions: (1)
What worked well? (2) What didn’t work so well? (3) What should we do
differently next time? Survey
questions should cover detailed areas under these or similar headings:
- Project Planning
- Functional Requirements
- Non-Functional Requirements
- Execution & Delivery
- Vendor Management
- Transition And Closure
- Project Manager
- Project Sponsor
Project managers and their teams should develop a habit of making recommendations.
Consistently ask the question, "What would we do differently if we could go
back and start over again?" Essential to this culture, though, is
that it requires a degree of honesty that some team members may find
uncomfortable. The feedback has to be constructive which can be done by avoiding
getting personal. Don't look to play the blame game; focus on understanding how
things could be done better in the future.
Creating a lessons-learned culture requires leadership support not simply time and buy-in
from project managers. The process for collecting, collating, analyzing and
disseminating lessons learned has to be simple if it's to be adopted. But once lessons have been captured, they have to be made easily
available to other project teams to help them learn from successes as well as
failures of the past. It is only if the teams understand what past projects have
to tell them so they can act upon that information.
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