Targeting the Lessons Learned Session

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Lessons Learned   Risk Management  

Many projects host “lessons learned” sessions after the project is completed or after a phase is completed. While these sessions are sometimes filled with a bit of whining and no small portion of finger pointing if the project was not completely successful, they can also be very useful for all parties involved. It is the project manager’s responsibility to make sure that these sessions are useful and positive experiences for all involved whether the project was successful or not.

The problem is primarily how the project manager is supposed to turn a session on learning from mistakes into a positive experience. The session might include participants such as managers who are already turned to an operational frame of mind, project leads who are already working on new projects, subject matter experts who consider the whole exercise a waste of time and stakeholders who just want to know where their money went.The project manager has to get all of these different people on the same page and find a way to receive useful information from them all while keeping peace and not running over the time allotted.

There are a few good strategies to employ that will help keep everything on track--and help everyone see the value of understanding their mistakes and taking away lessons for another day.

Homework
The project manager should do their homework in …

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