I have suggested my department to establish an effective Lessons Learned procedure, so we can make use of each others experiences. They asked me to come with an proposal and how to do it.
I am thinking of having a workshop (1 hour) at the beginning of a project, where recent projects and lessons learned are taken into consideration. Then after finishing the project, another session is held to extract the new "lessons learned" and put them into a collective place.
My toughest task is - how to categorize, organize and collect these Lessons learned and how to make them available for search. I know, that no big amount would be spent on this issue and intially they expect me to make an excel sheet. I dont think the excel sheet would be effective, but again maybe it can be done.
What are your suggestions? Is is is possible to make this easy in some kind of webpage environment. Ideally, I have thought about a page for submission, where key data is input from PM. And then a search page, which can sort and filter by application, date, project delivery method, etc.
All suggestions are welcome....please help me. Saving Changes...
David MorganProject Manager| Experian PLCGrantham, United Kingdom
I would assess the size of your department and the number of expected 'lessons' during the projects before jumping in to create elaborate web-based interfaces for collecting them.
It sounds like the current process is weak, or non-existant and therefore I would be tempted to deploy a very basic excel-based shared document, which you (or the PM) can control. Invite team members to contribute by email during the work and regularly re-visit at team meetings if necessary. Lessons learned can be extremely subjective, and in the past I have had to de-sensitise some of the lessons or be critical as to their inclusion in the register. Opening up such a process to a web-based interface would potentially remove that level of control, perhaps reducing its effectiveness en route.
The excel method would cost nothing and would allow you to demonstrate that the overall process works well. If, following review you believe that a web interface (or similar) would be of benefit then it shouldn't be hard to sell the idea.
Developing a webpage to solve the problem seems like overkill for you at this stage.
The department is big and will now exist of 400 people, and the amount of projcts per 6 months are approx. 10-15. It is basically one account treating a big customer.
That is why I thought, the excel may become difficult to get an overview in. However, I think you are pointing towards some issues that I have to take in consideration and maybe the web-based interface is overkill.
Can anyone show me some excel-templates as for inspiration or guidelines?! Saving Changes...
Brian PhillipsCEO| Yellowhouse.net Pty LtdHolland Park East, Qld, Australia
this is most interesting, as capturing and using Lessons Learned is one of the most logical areas for buiding capability and maturity and reducing errors and teh cost of re-work. However, most agencies do not do this effectively, if at all. Is is because they do not have a process, or is the culture resistent to learning from prevcious proejcts?
We have a client organisation where the project managers record Lessons Learned at project end, and then the PMO asigns a "Lessons Learned Owner", who is responsible for maintaining visibility within the project managment community.
It is maintained in a simple Excel sheet, and features in discussions in regular project manager Forums. Lessons Learned are thus embedded into the project management culture. Saving Changes...
Could you please tell me more about how it works. How do you update and keep track of lessons learned using excel. E.g. when you want to search? Or do you just filter it? Saving Changes...
Brian PhillipsCEO| Yellowhouse.net Pty LtdHolland Park East, Qld, Australia
From recall, their headings were like this:
Project Name
Lesson Learned Type (Classification List related to their business, eg Technology; Resources; Service Delivery; Change Management; Communications, Budget; Risk, etc)
Summary of the Lesson Learned
Actions taken:
Recomendations: (Brief)
LL Owner (assigned)
Status (Open/Closed/Hold)
Action (free field comments)
The PMO maintains the File and ensures it is updated and promoted to all project managers. It could easily be maintained in an Access database.
The important element is that this is an agreed and supported process, and used for growth and development. Saving Changes...
George JucanManaging Partner| Organizational Perfomance Enablers NetworkWoodbridge, Ontario, Canada
I use 2 spreadsheets to collect lessons learned, titled “things we did will” and “things we should improve”, mirroring the process groups vs. knowledge areas matrix from PMBOK Guide. This structure allows focusing the discussion and collect/organize the learning items.
But most important is to classify the projects so when you’re searching the lessons learned repository you’re retrieving only relevant items – or very close to. In my experience, vast majority of cases where lessons learned are not used are due to inefficient retrieval, not problems with capturing lessons learned. No PM has the time to spend days reading hundreds of pages of lessons learned and sorting what is applicable or not, so they will just ignore it. But a PM will use the repository if he/she can sort through content based on relevant metadata such as project type (new product, new service, existing product enhancement etc), project category (infrastructure, software etc) and complexity (http://www.gantthead.com/content/articles/231775.cfm) and pick only lessons learned from similar projects.
And combining with the structure indicated in the first paragraph the drill-down can continue to “scope management during initiation” lessons learned, for example. If you start with Excel it may get too complicated – the fundamental principle to be actually used is to be simple to record and simple to retrieve lessons learned.
Saving Changes...
Coul you please upload your template - so I can see how you do the classifying, and repository search. I dont want to have a solution - where PM go through pages....I need to have a "search functionality", which works out very well.... that is a challenge as my situation is now. Saving Changes...
Hi Mubashar Rashid,
I suggest you to structure and create your excel or your database as indicated by Brian Phillips & George Jucan, but also adapting it to your specific product development need.
I didn't understand, reading your first post, if you're developing software or building boats. So...insert information keys that can help you to search lesson learned.
Then, I'm sure that you'll be able to create quickly an excel or an access database...
The department develops software/applications and are divided in accounts.
I have made an access database - however my problem is still the "search function". I need it to work better...so people dont have to browse many pages to find the relevant Lessons Learned. At the moment, it is only possible to search one word/phrase at time - it restricts a flexible search.
