Andrew MartinProject Manager| Sunbelt RentalsCharlotte, Nc, United States
Hey everyone. I am seeking a lessons learned template. One that uses a weighting system to produce a visual chart to give a quick view of how the lessons are themed and what impact they had on the project.
Does anyone have a more visual template to share compared to the traditional 'log?'
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Sounds like you should be able to pull that together fairly easily in Excel, Andrew. All you need is to expand the log to include the theme and the impact. Then you can generate a pivot table and/or graph. Saving Changes...
Andrew MartinProject Manager| Sunbelt RentalsCharlotte, Nc, United States
thank you Stéphane. I am confident I could however I am hopeful to build on an established and functional template, likely more mature than what I would build alone.
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1 reply by Stéphane Parent
Sep 23, 2019 12:55 PM
Stéphane Parent
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My suspicion is that whatever could be shared would not be very mature. It's difficult to share templates and samples when we're dealing with confidentiality and intellectual property concerns.
My advice would be to worry much more about your categorization than how to present the data.
Lessons learned databases often become useless in large part due peoples' inability to define categories up front that allow useful grouping and retrieval of data later. It seems like it should be easy, but it can be very difficult other than having a few specific categories for tagging critical items like safety related.
If you find out later that the categories aren't providing value, or people aren't entering the information consistently to fit your categories, you are unlikely to go back and revise all the data later, so you just wasted time, money, and people's patience. Saving Changes...
Andrew MartinProject Manager| Sunbelt RentalsCharlotte, Nc, United States
Keith, thanks. I only seek advice on Tuesdays.
Today I'm interested in templates. Any assistance on this topic is appreciated.
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1 reply by Thomas Walenta
Oct 27, 2019 7:28 AM
Thomas Walenta
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Haha, Keith.
Trying to make friends?
The advice regarding templates is not to waste your time.
Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Sep 23, 2019 11:34 AM
Replying to Andrew Martin
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thank you Stéphane. I am confident I could however I am hopeful to build on an established and functional template, likely more mature than what I would build alone.
My suspicion is that whatever could be shared would not be very mature. It's difficult to share templates and samples when we're dealing with confidentiality and intellectual property concerns. Saving Changes...
Good news then. If their relevance and utility is not important, there are literally hundreds available through a Google search of "lessons learned template", some prettier than others. Saving Changes...
Beyond the template, I'd look at how lessons are being gathered (the effectiveness thereof), how they are being curated & scrubbed (as raw lessons are rarely usable) and how they are being leveraged (pull rarely works as well as push).
Lesson Learned is great, the problem is getting the information to become useful. I have yet to see working lessons learned. The problem is to get those lesson to be consulted. The problem is true in small and large organizations.
Recently I have chosen to rebuild the kitchen. The small organisation that design and build the cabinet made a few important mistakes that should have been avoided. When I confronted the Owner he made all the correction. When asking about lessons learned he told me he has them, showed me some pictures. Just a demonstration of a small shop that seems to document the lessons learned, but not learned.
The only case I have seen working is doing LL at a regular short interval in a large project. LL get used within the project context. Saving Changes...
