Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
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Making Post-Mortems Work
Post-mortems are done on dead bodies. No living being has ever been through a post-mortem--if they have been through one, they haven’t lived to tell the tale. Whichever way you look at it, post-mortems are painful affairs. They focus on finding out what failed, what went wrong and what could have been done to perhaps save a life. Is it any wonder then that the one project activity that has a name as macabre as this is often the least anticipated and least engaged phases of a project?
The concept of post-mortems as a post-launch activity on projects is a time-honored activity for project managers. Typically, the project leader sends out a note asking all participants to set aside some time to conduct a post-mortem on an initiative that just concluded. Often coming at the end of an intense project lifecycle, the last thing most people want to do is go through the horrors of re-living the painful moments, the protracted negotiations or the issues and conflicts overcome during a project.
These exercises often end up being re-hashed reviews of the risk plan or issues log, with some comments thrown in by a few bold team members. Many years ago I attended one of my first project post-mortem exercises. As I walked out of the meeting, the hallway conversations were more animated, detailed and potentially useful than all the time we spent in the formal meeting.
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"Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet." - Dave Barry |