The purpose of documenting lessons learned is to share and use knowledge derived from experience to: Promote the recurrence of desirable outcomes Preclude the recurrence of undesirable outcomes As a practice, lessons learned includes the processes necessary for identification, documentation, validation, and dissemination of lessons learned. Utilization and incorporation of those processes includes identification of applicable lessons learned, documentation of lessons learned, archiving lessons learned, distribution to appropriate personnel, identification of actions that will be taken as a result of the lesson learned, and follow-up to ensure that appropriate actions were taken.
Lessons learned document the cause of issues and the reasoning behind any corrective action taken to address those issues. When thinking about how to effectively document a project's lessons learned, consider these types of questions: What was learned about the project in general? What was learned about project management? What was learned about communication? What was learned about budgeting? What was learned about procurement? What was learned about working with sponsors?
What was learned about working with customers? What was learned about what went well? What was learned about what did not go well? A project manager is responsible for documenting and identifying lessons learned throughout the lifecycle of a task or project. A successful project manager will utilize the following strategies:. You and future teams will use this feedback to learn from your experience. It is important to create processes that streamline the capture and sharing of this information.
A great way to capture lessons learned is by surveying the people working on and observing the project. You might find that you can extract more diverse responses by administering a survey during a project instead of only after it ends. One benefit of a midproject survey is that you can identify and correct issues before they become a real problem.
Armanini helped create this sample of a midproject survey for project managers:. Another excellent way to capture comments from the team is to hold lessons learned meetings, sometimes called a post-mortem.
For more information about post-mortems , read our guide to running a post-mortem and download free post-mortem templates. Lessons learned meetings can occur at any point during a project.
During the meeting, your team should share feedback about what went well and what needs improvement. These meetings are also an effective team-building activity, as they are more collaborative than conducting individual surveys. Your lessons learned meetings should all follow a similar format and usually begin with a stated agenda. Let your team know what you will cover and what you expect them to contribute.
Next, encourage a robust group discussion of the lessons learned during the project, and make sure that you have assigned someone to take the minutes. This discussion should include a critical evaluation of the lessons learned and a plan for how to utilize them in future projects. To learn more, read our guide on how to conduct a lessons learned meeting.
One of the most critical steps in applying lessons learned is creating lessons learned reports. The purpose of writing a lessons learned report is to consolidate the input from your team and present it to an audience in a concise and legible way. You can use the above sample lessons learned report to display the conclusions from your surveys and meetings, as well as your own observations as a project manager.
Download the completed version and use it for reference. You can also edit and customize it based on information that is important to your audience. The best way to share your findings is to create specific reports for varying engagement levels. Every completed project provides experience to the people working on it, whether or not it was a success. These lessons can be universal or specific to the task. Below are examples of lessons learned for different levels in an organization.
Organizations that capture and utilize lessons learned from past projects can more easily avoid mistakes, repeat their successes, and minimize risks on future work.
Project managers play an integral role in this process and enable their teams to thrive. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics , about half of all new businesses fail in the first five years.
A company that commits to documenting and improving its processes stands a much better chance of survival than one that does not. Hiring and retaining stellar project managers ensures that these processes will continuously improve. By identifying lessons learned, you can capitalize on your successes and take note of your mistakes. Additional benefits of lessons learned in project management include the following:. When you implement lessons learned processes with your team, you will likely run across some challenges.
Here are some examples of challenges that project managers face:. The most crucial step in applying lessons learned to future projects is identifying those lessons in the first place. Project work promotes immense innovation, experimentation and exploration looking for better ways of doing things. While each project is unique, it is extremely important to use all the experiences and lessons learnt from past projects to bring in efficiency in the on-going project.
Capturing all new lessons learnt effectively and ensuring that the new lessons learned are used across the organization in all the current and future projects, so that the teams do not repeat the same mistakes and can exploit all the good experiences. Lessons learned become new knowledge for the organization. Organizations are putting maximum emphasis on knowledge management. During the lessons learned meeting everyone shares their perspective on what they thought about the project, what they would have changed, what they learned and what could have been done better.
That leads us to the next question:. Lessons learned workshops are performed for three reasons: The first is to learn from mistakes and to avoid these mistakes in future projects. The second is to gather best practices — that is smart ways of doing something — and to pass on this knowledge to other project leaders.
The third reason is for trust building with your stakeholders and team members. Involving people in the process and giving them the opportunity to share their perspective will make them more supportive towards project management as well as future projects.
That being said, it should be clear that lessons learned workshops are not just a forum for people to vent their anger. Sometimes you might get this impression when people are being very negative. But a project review should always be about sharing helpful and constructive feedback and ideas to become better. The process differs depending on the number of attendees:.
The challenge in such workshops is that people will be relatively reserved to give candid feedback. What usually breaks the ice is when one person steps up. Then others will follow and share their criticism openly. If you believe it will be hard to get the attendees to open up, consider planning some discussion points in advance. Like, putting in a few self jabs to show humility and humor.
And to show others that being self-critical of both themselves and their team is accepted. This will help to get the ball rolling for the shy people. Start off by welcoming the team. Then move on to explaining the purpose of a lessons learned workshop. You should have gotten enough ideas from this article.
Next, explain the meeting rules. Attendees should understand they are supposed to be constructive , whether they liked the project or not. Everybody is asked to give their feedback on the following questions:. You have to decide how to record the results.
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