Lessons Learned From Projects
Lessons learned. Everyone has a moment in time where they look back and ask themselves why they didn’t perform a task, or make a decision differently. If only they had chosen a different path, a different answer. If only they didn’t make the mistake that lead to the demise of the current situation. These are the lessons learned moments. It also happens in projects. They should be something you keep in a journal, if only to reflect back on them and use them to improve yourself, your status, and your decision making skills.
Are you annotating your lessons learned? If not, why not? Just like visiting the gym, or starting that new diet next week, there are always reasons individuals devise in order not to keep a lessons learned manual. There is a dire lack of resources. There isn’t time to keep additional documentation. I don’t have the support of management. No one created a specification on how to retain project lessons learned. We do not have the capabilities to keep and recall the information. (Microsoft SharePoint, anyone?)
The end of a project is the worse time to gather lessons learned. The project has ended and everyone wants to put it behind them. A sigh of relief shouldn’t be the reason not to collect important information. In a huge project that lasts months going into a couple of years, there will be a lot of information forgotten along the way that won’t be in recall at the end. If the project team disperses in their separate ways, it only makes it more difficult to collect the lessons.
Collecting your lessons learned as the project progresses, everyone is on board with constructive ideas and notions. Issues such as the situation, the answer to the situation, and any further comments should be annotated. Coming into the next project with a list of issues and topics concerning risks, defects in project quality or resources, problems with vendors, changes from customers and stakeholders are some of the topics you can track, and retain a more complete list of items. Areas of corrections and improvement can also be tracked and enhanced. If certain ideas worked, it can be listed, as well as things that fell through and failed. What were the impacts upon the project as a whole? Positive? Negative?
You can also keep track of risk and risk management, scope of the project and any changes, project requirements and how they were managed, was the schedule adhered to, and how much did the project remain in budget tolerances. Were resources utilized to their best capabilities? Did the project contain the desired quality as stated by the client? The teamwork of the team members and how they resolved problems and issues are a lesson to retain. Communication is very important in a project, both from the leader and from the direction of the project team. Any issues in communication is a lesson to be learned. Keeping up with the project status, how it is progressing through its stages, and any roadblocks should be a topic for future discussion, especially if it occurs in every project.
Once captured, your lessons learned journal should be saved, preferably online in a collaboration or business intelligence format for other project teams to learn from. This breeds productivity, efficiency, and decreases mistakes to be made in the future. This knowledge transfer is a godsend when others review the lessons before starting a project, and discuss how to manage the risks and problems of previous projects. Projects become consistent, and decrease development time lost to correcting mistakes.
PMP training contains a full list of project management issues and topics, including lessons learned, and other related matters that help or hinder a project. K Alliance training aids in giving certification training to managers and leaders, along with training courses in many other areas.
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