The Start of a New Year: A Time for Retrospection?

 

It's hard to believe how fast 2010 shot by. I'm still consciously writing the new date down on notes and other documents. Hopefully, by the end of the week writing 2011 will feel as natural as writing 2010. I don't know about you, but I seem to go through this every year—for at least a week or two.

I also tend to look back at the successes and challenges of the previous year and try to map out a plan for the future. In project terms you might call it a retrospect, a lessons-learned or a project post-mortem. It really doesn't matter what you call it, it's a good idea to look back at the previous year (and the previous project for that matter) and see where there were successes along with where there were some challenges. However, sometimes in the rush of all the things that need to get done, it's hard to set aside enough time to sit down and consider areas of success that should be repeated and those areas that I need to work on to improve. (I don't imagine that I am alone  facing that challenge.)

Not too long ago, in another post, I was talking about the project retrospective and heard back from someone that said they didn't do retrospectives in their organization because the consequences of identifying areas that needed improvement and the challenges of working through them were too great. That particular project manager's organization didn't have the tolerance (or the patience) for the process. It appears that there are some short-sighted organizations who think that identifying a problem leads to an immediate solution and that project teams never make the same mistake twice. As nice as that would be, I don't think it's anything that approximates how things work in the real world. Mistakes and challenges are just a part of projects. The trick is to creatively overcome, adapt and make incremental improvement. Much like facing the challenges associated with the new year.

Here's to an efficient and profitable 2010, er ... 2011. Ahem.