How to Get Your Team to Care About Lessons Learned
From the Voices on Project Management Blog
by Cameron McGaughy,
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Date
Conducting lessons learned sessions is necessary for continuous project improvement. But not every project team or organization embraces these sessions with enthusiasm.
You’ve probably heard skepticism about lessons learned sessions. Team members might say things like, “Thank God the project is over. Let’s just move on.” Or, “What we always learn from lessons learned is that we never learn from lessons learned, so do we really need to do this?”
By not taking the time for learning, sharing and improving from past mistakes, organizations are condemned to repeat them. But the cycle can be broken. NASA, for example, learned from major project mistakes that had severe consequences. By establishing a knowledge management program that became part of its enterprise culture, it evolved into a learning organization.
Here are seven tips for planning, organizing and conducting a lessons learned session that will engage your team and yield valuable insights.
1. Set Expectations
Set the expectation early in the project that no matter how the project proceeds, the lessons learned session will be conducted at the end of each project stage or the project end.
This is how you can build in lessons learned as a planned project quality measure. Everyone will become conscious that learning from good or bad experiences is an integrated—integral—part of the project.
2. Lead by Example
The project manager should be the one planning, conducting and following up on the lessons learned. You should lead by example and show that the lessons learned matter.
3. Spread Optimism
Before starting the lessons learned discussion, praise the team for its efforts and results throughout the project. Establish a positive attitude by encouraging the team to participate actively and constructively, with the ultimate goal of learning and getting better.
4. Keep the Session Short and Inclusive
Keep the lessons learned session short: 1-2 hours, depending on the project size. Avoid monopolizing the discussions around project key players, and give everyone the chance to contribute.
5. Make Lessons Actionable
Establish simple questions such as: What went well or poorly? Is it worth learning from that? How can we improve or repeat the experience? Make the lessons learned and measures actionable by assigning them to team members for follow-up and setting deadlines for concluding them.
6. Learn From the Good, Too
Generally, lessons learned sessions are perceived as an opportunity for talking about the negative parts of the project. My recommendation is, balance the discussions by also talking about the good (what’s worth repeating), the bad (what’s worth improving) and the ugly (what should be definitely avoided).
7. Walk the Talk
Don’t make the mistake of forgetting about the learned session. Follow up on the action items and make sure the additional learning effort was worth conducting. This will also ensure continuous project improvement through lessons learned.
How do you help your team take lessons learned seriously? How does your organization embrace a project’s lessons learned—whether positive or negative—to improve its performance?
Posted
by
Marian Haus
on: May 14, 2015 10:21 AM |
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Comments (10)
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Thilo Wack
Head of Existing Product and Test Lab| optimed
Tholey-Hasborn, Germany
In my experience lessons learned is the most valuable yet underutilized process of all. People do not like to be reminded of their mistakes and most organizations do not have the right culture to foster the right mindset for such a retrospective. They focus on the past, on what went wrong and why, maybe even ask who made the mistake. But, like you said, one needs to be looking forward, by taking the next step in the analysis and make the lessons actionable. That way people do not feel it's the blame game, but about how to improve.
Aejaz Shaikh
PM I| Alyx Technologies India Pvt Ltd
Pune, Maharshatra, India
Lessons learned will have a positive impact on new projects if undertaken in the correct way. I say Lesson learned is not an activity only to be performed at the end or Project Closure but instead this should be documented in all the phases of the Project, and at the end a discussion on all this points will help the team in recollecting all the experience they gained and now are better prepared of any such occurrence in any of the future projects
Daniel Taylor
Project Manager - PMP| R&D/Leverage
Blue Springs, Mo, United States
Item number 6 really stands out for me. This is one of the hardest things to do. A lot of team members are hyper critical of themselves, which always seems to drive conversations to the negative. Thank you for the article.
anil kukreti
Senior engineer | Mobiquity softech pvt ltd
Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India
Leading by example and spreading optimizm help in developing and managing team for further projects. Moreover having discussions on lessons learned and thereafter taking actions to perform better in future is one form of continuous improvments.
Lessons Learned ... a way of continuous improvement. Thanks for the nice Blog. Regards..
Sujith Kattathara
Founder, CEO| FreelanceTeams Private Limited
Ernakulam, Kerala, India
Marian
Thanks for the great article - I am a wholehearted believer.
Where I see Lessons learnt going off the rails is in the adoption.
Specially when there are multiple departments or functions impacted by a project, the Lessons Learnt meeting frequently turns into a blame game, and mostly no one stands up to take ownership of corrective actions. A couple of Lessons learnt cycles later, everyone quietly agrees to drop the exercise.
At the highest level of abstraction, what is needed to make this a success is a supportive & engaged Executive team.
At the ground level, I propose that we convert "Lessons learnt" into a Quality gate in the Project management process, and ensure that projects cannot be closed without effectively closing this quality gate (and the key phrase here is "effectively closing"). I know that this is the "stick" approach, but I do not see a working "carrot" solution to the problem.
What do you think?
Nice article. I am a strong believer in 'Lessons Learnt'. Over the last decade or so, I have strictly adhered to the discipline of 'Lessons Learnt'. Yes, it is a challenge if the team has never gone through lessons learnt before because it is not a technical task which will be of immediate use.
The project manager, who is the most likely facilitator, also needs to believe in the process to conduct it with passion. It works really well in long term projects since the team can see the implementation of lessons learnt in the immediate next project/assignment.
If conducted well, it brings out great ideas on what went well and what could be done better. When some of these are implemented and the benefit is realized in the next project, it is worthwhile giving credit to the person who mentioned this in the last lessons learnt. This encourages people to continue to give constructive feedback.
Thanks for the article. While having the lessons learned discussion, if some misses were there or something failed it is imperative that we need to identify what went wrong, what process needs to be corrected. Here we should avoid focusing on who did that mistake. Moment we start discussion who did this mistake etc it will lead for two issues 1) People can start with blame games 2) People might not come forward to share their experience or learning.
We need to ensure knowledge gained through this lessons learned discussion is effectively used during Look Ahead Meeting in the future projects.
Great article. Lessons learnt should however should be seen in the contect of new project and the environment in which it is being undertaken.
My PhD is focused on pm lessons learned, you may enjoy reading my blog www.pmlessonslearned.info
http://www.invictaprojects.com.au/pmlessonslearnedblog/
KR, Stephen
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