Lessons Learned and Project Achievements Templates
Marcellia KempAssociate Project Manager| OCMI INCGaithersburg, MD, United States
I was wondering if anyone would share a template you may have to collect Lessons Learned on Capital Maintenance project. Also, if you could share how you collect to report out achievements on your projects. Thanks. Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
There are different ways to collect lessons learned, Marcellia. You can use structured or unstructured surveys, email requests or interviews. In all cases, the idea is for each stakeholder to tell you what worked for them and what didn't. If you play your cards right, you can get your project achievements at the same time. You can report your project achievements in a standalone document or on an intranet web page.
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1 reply by Marcellia Kemp
Feb 21, 2022 11:50 AM
Marcellia Kemp
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What I need is a template for my team. We have Lessons Learned on our biweekly meetings each week but no one captures anything and it doesn't have any affect.
you may wish to watch the on-demand webinar I did on lessons learned for this community a couple of years back as it provides a number of lessons (no pun intended) about this often poorly implemented practice.
Collecting lessons is of little value if they aren't used and one of the best ways to use them is to bake them into the working agreements and standards used by the team.
Kiron
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1 reply by Marcellia Kemp
Feb 21, 2022 11:48 AM
Marcellia Kemp
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Thank you, are you sure the webinar still exist on the site? I guess I can do a search and will let you know. Thanks.
Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Marcellia,
there are several (approx 3000) artefacts in this website about lessons learned, and you may find something that is useful for your purpose.
In some projects, we had a LL register to gather LL events during the project and we could review those at the end. We also shared LLs during brown bag sessions to all interested PMs in the organization. If you want to track re-use of LL, this is another story, it has to be done centrally supported e.g. by a PMO and by a knowledge mgmt system (which is a program on its own).
As for LL sessions at the of a project, it is important to recognise the team members and key stakeholders (also from the client) - that is the human side. The technical side is - what you ask for - to review the project results, I normally use the last steering committee report as input, including original idea (charter, business case), sequence of major changes, risks materialised, final results, in terms of scope, schedule and cost. If you have customer sat, team morale and human highlights.
Then I often do a SWOT analysis with the audience to reflect on the project and highlight recommendations.
Hope this gives you some ideas.
Thomas
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1 reply by Marcellia Kemp
Feb 27, 2022 1:35 PM
Marcellia Kemp
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Thank you for sharing your article. It was very informative. I like how you related it to ethics and credibility.
Saving Changes...
Marcellia KempAssociate Project Manager| OCMI INCGaithersburg, MD, United States
Feb 20, 2022 6:01 PM
Replying to Kiron Bondale
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Marcellia -
you may wish to watch the on-demand webinar I did on lessons learned for this community a couple of years back as it provides a number of lessons (no pun intended) about this often poorly implemented practice.
Collecting lessons is of little value if they aren't used and one of the best ways to use them is to bake them into the working agreements and standards used by the team.
Kiron
Thank you, are you sure the webinar still exist on the site? I guess I can do a search and will let you know. Thanks. Saving Changes...
Marcellia KempAssociate Project Manager| OCMI INCGaithersburg, MD, United States
Feb 20, 2022 1:34 PM
Replying to Stéphane Parent
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There are different ways to collect lessons learned, Marcellia. You can use structured or unstructured surveys, email requests or interviews. In all cases, the idea is for each stakeholder to tell you what worked for them and what didn't. If you play your cards right, you can get your project achievements at the same time. You can report your project achievements in a standalone document or on an intranet web page.
What I need is a template for my team. We have Lessons Learned on our biweekly meetings each week but no one captures anything and it doesn't have any affect.
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1 reply by Stéphane Parent
Feb 21, 2022 12:15 PM
Stéphane Parent
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All you need is a list of things that went well and things that did not go so well. You then decide how you want to ensure what was well done will be carried forward. You also decide what to do, if anything, for those that did not go so well. That's a table with two columns!
The template will not make any difference into how well they are implemented. You have two choices. First, you can embed the lessons learned into your organizational process assets, which will benefit future and following projects. Second, you can embed the lessons learned into your project workload so that they are applied immediately and in your current project. Either way, the template won't make a difference. It's really about tracking your lessons learned until they become part of the organizational culture.
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Feb 21, 2022 11:50 AM
Replying to Marcellia Kemp
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What I need is a template for my team. We have Lessons Learned on our biweekly meetings each week but no one captures anything and it doesn't have any affect.
All you need is a list of things that went well and things that did not go so well. You then decide how you want to ensure what was well done will be carried forward. You also decide what to do, if anything, for those that did not go so well. That's a table with two columns!
The template will not make any difference into how well they are implemented. You have two choices. First, you can embed the lessons learned into your organizational process assets, which will benefit future and following projects. Second, you can embed the lessons learned into your project workload so that they are applied immediately and in your current project. Either way, the template won't make a difference. It's really about tracking your lessons learned until they become part of the organizational culture. Saving Changes...
I would suggest you might consider 2 templates. One to collect the inputs from stakeholders, and the other to organize your lessons learned for later use.
One of the major problems encountered in collecting this info is that it is often difficult to find the relevant items later without manually reviewing lists that quickly grow very large. Once you have enough collected, you can affinitize them into groups, create categories, apply keywords etc. to make your list sort and searchable.
Rather than trying to get all the stakeholders to organize their thoughts in a very structured way up front stifling their inputs, you can collect their brain-dumps, then organize/structure it as you put it in your master file for use later. Saving Changes...
