Continuous Improvement: From Theory to Reality

  Lessons Learned  

I attended a conference last week that covered the topic of "Continuous Improvement." The speaker in question recommended project managers to conduct post-mortems after every assignment to identify process changes that could be adopted in order to improve future projects.

Dozens of books have already been written on continuous improvement, and I can't add much to the subject--so I won't. But I do want to clarify why continuous improvement isn't the silver bullet most people think it is.

Welcome To Reality

Reality is, no two projects are alike. And while you might, in retrospect, identify things that you could have done better in your previous project, it doesn't necessarily mean that applying your findings to your next project will automatically result in faster, cheaper, better software.

Let's assume you're a project manager in charge of developing ezines (electronic magazines delivered via a website or an e-mail newsletter). You've just completed managing the development of Better Projects and decide to have a post-mortem to determine how you could improve your process for your next project: gantthead.

Your Better Projects post-mortem conclusions are clear. Ezines should be developed according to the Waterfall approach:

• Start with a prototype
• Develop a static HTML template based on the approved prototype
• Wrap the template around the …

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