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"The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes." -- Tony Blair

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Project Close - Lessons Learned


About the Author: A Project Management Consultant at numerous large companies for more than 25 years, James Kuhn, PMP, regularly serves on professional panels to promote the principles espoused by the Project Management Institute (PMI). A graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy with a B.S. in General Engineering, he also holds a M.A. in Public Administration from the University of Oklahoma and a Bachelor of International Management from Thunderbird Graduate School of International Management.

 

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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