The Postmortem Process

Chi-Pong Wong is a seasoned supply chain strategist, program manager, service center manager and relations manager. He has published on leading online magazines and other popular journals. He earned a MA in Economics at SUNY Stony Brook and a MS in Computer Science at Duke University. He can be reached at Linkedin and [email protected].

  Lessons Learned   Risk Management  

The postmortem is a process, not just a review--albeit some view it that way. This perception frequently stems from the ever-crushing business environment in which one project is completed and another is standing by (or has even been started) awaiting resources to be relinquished. Running a business without exploiting lessons learned from completed projects (in order to cross-pollinate deficiency improvements and best practices to other projects and organizations) should be avoided.

In its simplest form, a postmortem should contain three stages:

1. Pre-meeting input: Stakeholders reminisce and tally up what they perceive as learned lessons, both good and bad. This is done individually rather than in a group meeting to avoid cross influences.
2. Brainstorming: Project manager holds a brainstorm meeting after collecting pre-meeting inputs from the stakeholders. Each of the stakeholders’ thoughts will be reviewed and assessed to determine impact severities and mitigation actions, and then the ownerships and closure dates of those actions. Cross-fertilization of corrections and best practices to other projects and organizations must be tasked for the business to attain maximum benefit.
3. Post-meeting Follow-up: All actions formulated during the postmortem brainstorm meeting are followed up until they are closed. During this stage, the project manager …

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