Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Learn Your Lesson
Does your organization do a good job capturing and leveraging lessons learned on its projects? If not, perhaps responsibility for this crucial practice should be shifted from occupied project managers and teams to a full-time knowledge management coordinator inside the PMO.
Many project managers subscribe to the concept of collecting lessons learned so others may benefit by adopting practices that have had a positive influence and taking steps to avoid repeating unpleasant experiences. Gathering lessons learned is commonly accepted as a good thing to do and a measure of project management common sense.
But if project managers wait until a project is over to gather lessons learned there is a tendency to either rush through the process or ignore it completely in favor of other priorities. After all, the "reasoning" goes, this project is nearly done (and we'll find time to document the project lessons learned later when things calm down).
The problem is, of course, that things never calm down. The lessons, far from being either learned or shared, are usually forgotten. Organizations haven't focused enough energy on this because it's hard to quantify the cost of what you wouldn't have done if you had known it had been tried before. Or the savings of what you would have done if you had thought of it in time.
But if project managers wait until a project is over to gather lessons learned there is a tendency to either rush through the process or ignore it completely in favor of other priorities. After all, the "reasoning" goes, this project is nearly done (and we'll find time to document the project lessons learned later when things calm down).
The problem is, of course, that things never calm down. The lessons, far from being either learned or shared, are usually forgotten. Organizations haven't focused enough energy on this because it's hard to quantify the cost of what you wouldn't have done if you had known it had been tried before. Or the savings of what you would have done if you had thought of it in time.
Realizing this, it …
Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.
ADVERTISEMENTS
|
"We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away." - ChuangTzu |