I'm setting up a lessons learned process in my organization:
- What are the specific ways you are managing lessons learned?
- What are the best practices used to gather lessons learned? How are they gathered? How do you encourage participation and avoid the blame game?
- How do you set up the repository to retrieve and use lessons learned information on future projects? Saving Changes...
This might sound a bit rude at first but it is a practical demonstration very much on point with your question. Over the last 5 or so years on this site, questions about lessons learned have come up at least 10 times. See if you can find them, and read through them to see how much value they provide.
This is not at all to brush off your question and just say "Use the search function." Quite the contrary. Instead you will most likely immediately see the issues others have encountered sharing lessons learned about trying to share lessons learned. You're probably going to consider few of what you find helpful, and that's the point of the exercise.
You're going to encounter a number of issues regarding relevance of others experience to your needs, the general quality of inputs, and the ability to search through inputs effectively to find what you need. Those are examples of the challenges you face, and part of the root cause is the lack of structure in free-form text unless you're using big data processing like Apache Hadoop. Saving Changes...
arlene trimbleAssistant IT Director| Local GovernmentAlamo, Ca, United States
Lessons Learned can be gathered throoughout the project at the end of each sprint or project - during the closure phase via interviews, meetings, surveys, etc. Saving Changes...
You can implement a Filenet repository to gather lessons learned. Saving Changes...
Oscar VegaGeneral Program Manager| Thales Spain (Retired)Collado Villalba, Madrid, Spain
Hello Samuel,
the best practices recommend to:
1.-make regular meetings yo adress the Lessons Learned (LL)
2.-identifiy the LL correctly (no everything that happends on a project (good or bad) leads to a LL)
3.-use any suitable SW for a repository, so that other can benefit from the learning.
4.-normally the problems in the projects are similar. Do not issue thousand of LL. It will be useless.
5.-encourage people by showing good examples of LL from other peers.
Hope it helps. Saving Changes...
Angie LehmannProject Manager| NDITDetroit Lakes, Mn, United States
Samuel, Do you think it would be beneficial to add at least two lessons learned from prior projects into your new project's charter? Then eventually, over time you could refer to old projects by looking at the project charter associated with that particular project. It would be a good way to align one project with a similar project as well. e.g. a building project from 5 years ago could be referenced for a new building project. Or, a software project charter from last year could be referenced for a new upcoming software project. Might be easier than looking through a repository of lessons learned. Just an idea! Good Luck!
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1 reply by Housam Krema
Oct 25, 2022 4:15 AM
Housam Krema
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Angie, this is really very nice idea thanks for sharing that.
Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Keith is correct: this whole forum is a lessons learned database, with all its features and foibles. Saving Changes...
Mark BelcikPrincipal Engineer| Greater Cincinnati Metropolitan Sewer DistrictCincinnati, Oh, United States
Logging, making changes and communicating lessons learned is relatively simple. The difficult effort is to get the project managers to submit lessons learned. We have had some success getting lessons learned submitted as long as a supervisor continues to make it a priority. It would be great if there was a way to have project managers want to submit lessons learned.
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1 reply by Stéphane Parent
Jul 15, 2022 11:58 AM
Stéphane Parent
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"It would be great if there was a way to have project managers want to submit lessons learned."
Set up the compensation package to remunerate project managers who submit lessons learned.
Saving Changes...
Oscar VegaGeneral Program Manager| Thales Spain (Retired)Collado Villalba, Madrid, Spain
It is indeed difficult to collect LL.
But we should not forget that it is a key part of the management of a project.
PMI insist regularly in the collection of LL in all the editions of the Pmbook.
I know a company that for example introduce it as a point, in the template of the minutes of meetings document. This encourages PMs to addres it. Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Jul 15, 2022 10:22 AM
Replying to Mark Belcik
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Logging, making changes and communicating lessons learned is relatively simple. The difficult effort is to get the project managers to submit lessons learned. We have had some success getting lessons learned submitted as long as a supervisor continues to make it a priority. It would be great if there was a way to have project managers want to submit lessons learned.
"It would be great if there was a way to have project managers want to submit lessons learned."
Set up the compensation package to remunerate project managers who submit lessons learned. Saving Changes...
I am surprised with this thread: I thought most project managers encourage keeping track of lesson learned (ML). Certainly, at our company we have incorporated ML into our project management system for a long time.
As a CEO, I firmly believe in using Balanced Scorecards. ("Translating Strategy into Action") and one of its main perspectives is "Learning and Growth" / Employee Skills. In a project environment, ML is one of the main tracking components.
As you might expect, ML is formalized within ProjectContexts.
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1 reply by Keith Novak
Jul 15, 2022 4:25 PM
Keith Novak
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Quite the contrary. Most PMs do encourage keeping and using lessons learned.
The problem is that as the data accumulates, users find little value in the information. They have to wade full of mountains of lessons learned to find anything relevant if they can find it at all. At the working end, it's a value equation: How much work do I put in and how much value do I get out? If the second part of the question is: very little value, then people soon realize putting in extensive work on something that will never be used is wasted effort.
I think the fundamental problem is structuring the information so it is actually useful later.
