Pitfalls to avoid for lessons learned
From the The Money Files Blog
by Elizabeth Harrin
A blog that looks at all aspects of project and program finances from budgets, estimating and accounting to getting a pay rise and managing contracts.
Written by Elizabeth Harrin from RebelsGuideToPM.com.
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Last time I looked at some tips for making lessons learned sessions run a bit more smoothly, and it made me think about some of the pitfalls we see when facilitating those sessions. My own experience is with using the model associated with predictive projects, but I imagine you could get stuck with these pitfalls if you were doing retrospectives with an agile team as well.
Image credit: ChatGPT
Here are some things to look out for once your lessons learned conversation is in the diary.
Focusing on only the negative things. Don’t let the session focus only on the negative. Yes, people like to have the opportunity to share the things that didn’t go well. If it helps the atmosphere to have a moan about the elephant in the room, then do so. But make sure there’s some time on the agenda left to discuss the working practices that were successful, otherwise you’ll all leave the meeting feeling like nothing went well, and I’m sure that wasn’t the case.
Making the sessions too long or too short. Who wants to give up an afternoon for a workshop? No one. And yet if your session is too short, you won’t have time to properly address any issues, come up with action plans or go through the agenda. The exact length of time is going to depend on what you’re wanting to cover and how much prep the team have done beforehand. Question why you need longer than an hour.
The same topics coming up regularly because they haven’t been handled. Regular lessons learned are part of the process, but too frequent and you won’t have had a chance to fix anything – and the same problems will come up again.
Listening to people say they suffered the same challenges because nothing has changed is annoying and frustrating and leaves people wondering what the point is of raising anything if nothing will be done.
People not feeling safe to speak up. Psychological safety is important if you want to get to the truth, but if no one is prepared to share what they thought didn’t go well, you won’t be able to improve. This is a hard one to address if the organisational culture is conspiring against you, but have a think about how you may be able to overcome it if it’s a risk for you. Having smaller sessions with targeted conversations, or anonymous surveys might be options.
Not doing anything with the output. Yep, this is all about leaving your lessons documented in a folder gathering electronic dust somewhere. Not good. Make sure they are turned into actions and have people responsible for doing something with them. At the very least, share them with the other project managers in your group.
Not being able to determine actions properly as you don’t have the detail to hand. So you’ve recognised you need to do something to change a process? If you don’t have the As Is process to hand, it might be hard to work out the action required to make the improvement. And that basically means the improvement won’t get done as what are the chances of someone doing the mapping and analysis afterwards? Unless the leadership team puts a lot of emphasis on follow up, you might miss that out.
These are some of the pitfalls of holding reflection sessions, but by all means I’m sure this list is not definitive. What are the other challenges you’ve found in your own meetings? Let me know in the comments!
Posted on: July 09, 2024 09:00 AM |
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Comments (12)
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Kwiyuh Michael Wepngong
Community Champion
Financial Management Specialist | US Peace Corps
Yaounde, Centre, Cameroon
Vinod Garg
CEO| PROMAC ADVISORS PRIVATE LIMITED
Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
Nice article. Thanks for sharing. Lessons learned is a very important topic in project management .
nice topic covered, great read
Good advice that can be implemented by all immediately
In my division, we have addressed some of these pitfalls by:
A) Having a template to record:
- What went well... - What did not go as well... - What we would do differently next time or for a similar project.
B) Scheduling a retrospective session of 30, 45 or 60 minutes depending on the size and length of the project.
C) Having our Management Team select one recommendation from each project and commit to implement it.
In my team, we often find the retro time is not enough. So our scrum master asks the team to select top3-5 issue and discuss in details, align activities and then monitor the situation afterwards.
Rose Green
Project Management Officer| LJMU
Liverpool, United Kingdom
We're working to embed Lessons Learned as a continuous process throughout the project, that way we capture the lessons as they arise rather than asking people to dig into their memories!
Rose Green
Project Management Officer| LJMU
Liverpool, United Kingdom
We're working to embed Lessons Learned as a continuous process throughout the project, that way we capture the lessons as they arise rather than asking people to dig into their memories!
Nurlan Beskenov
Project supervisor| LLP Joint venture Inkai
Shymkent, South Kazakhstan Region, Kazakhstan
Nurlan Beskenov
Project supervisor| LLP Joint venture Inkai
Shymkent, South Kazakhstan Region, Kazakhstan
Nurlan Beskenov
Project supervisor| LLP Joint venture Inkai
Shymkent, South Kazakhstan Region, Kazakhstan
Thank you, Elizabeth for article. I agree that it is difficult to discuss lessons learned, and one of the rules for discussion is that it's important to speak about the work done, and not about the personal strengths and weaknesses of employees.
Costar Machina
Volunteer Project Manager | PMI South African Chapter
Johannesburg, Gp, South Africa
Very live and engaging. Thanks
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