At most places I have worked, lessons learned from a project do not benefit future work because it is not available in an accessible way to other team members. Has anyone found an effective and accessible way to document and publish information from lessons learned or retrospectives so that after projects close, that knowledge and those ideas will not be lost? What tool did you use? How did you structure the information? What discipline did you need to put in place? Saving Changes...
By far, the best way to leverage lessons learned is by including them into your organizational process assets: templates, samples, checklists, ... Saving Changes...
Vijay SuryavanshiProject Manager - Engineering| RECARO Aircraft SeatingPlantation, Fl, United States
Agree with Thomas Walenta.
But how do you measure the financial value ? Here is what can be done.
Use the following template to complete the Lessons learned.
ID No. Description Type of lesson Project Phase Lesson area Impact area
Action recommended Lessons learned.
Ask the team the following questions : "What went well ? What did not go well ? How can things be improved ? OR How would u do things differently if u did it again ?
Once line items are documented, the same lessons learned document can be used to a conduct a RISK analysis (Develop a RISK Table) for a future NEW project.
Same line items what u learned from the previous projects can be seen as RISKS now. (Most of them if not all of them are seen as risks) . Assign proper probability of failures, cost impact, schedule impact and quality impact with factored risk. calculate the total impact for each item and sum it up in terms of cost. (Also, assign any new risks that u can foresee or others foresee in the team.).
Finally assign proper contingency and management reserve to the project plan outside of risk costs. Saving Changes...
In my opinion, LL should comply to both criteria usefulness and easiness to use.
How to achieve that?
Three Actions should be taken :
1- The project team who elaborate LL should write it so it can be understood by a person that he is not from the team or the organisation.
2- Organisation should assign LL collection to a single responsible ex: PMO, Quality Management Officer etc. in order to create and maintain a LL repository.
3. Distil the collected raw information from LL and why not make it actionable or standardize it when it comes to template, check list or procedures.
Recently I read Building a Second Brain written by Tiago Forte he explained an interesting framework called CODE which stands
for( Collect, Organize Distil and Express ) I invite you to read about it and transpose it to project LL.
Good Luck! Saving Changes...
Shivani DarjiDirector, Program Operations and Analytics| Change HealthcareSuwanee, Ga, United States
I agree with others, building knowledge sharing needs to be woven into the company's culture as this approach can not only solicit feedback from all levels of the organization, the perspectives that people have can bring light to advancement of standards and even innovation. Some people may be hesitant to share their knowledge as they may feel sharing will make them "less" valuable and less "needed" in the organization but in reality in quite the opposite.
Having leaders continuously emphasize the importance of lessons learned and perhaps even showing the impact of not using lessons learned along with an incentive scheme can help to start create the culture. Saving Changes...
In ProjectContexts, we have a LL element that:
1. is open and useable from the moment a new project starts: don't wait to recall at the end of the project.
2. the LL section has subsections that can be categorized by subject line to make it trackable along all projects by filtering on the subject line
3. Last but not least, a LL is just a L until you make that "L" an "LL": it should be actionable Saving Changes...
s srinivasa raochief digital and information officer| VEDANTA ALUMINIUM AND POWER LIMITEDTuticorin, Tamilnadu, India
lessons learnt from your project is very important factor which can measure how you managed your projects and handled risks and opportunities. But in most cases PM ignore the fact and focus on completing the project. if you categorize the lessons it can be many some of them as per my experience is strategic learning, stakeholder management learning, communication, technical, strategic etc. lessons learnt can help PM to prepare plan for next project however it can also help during the project life cycle also. Saving Changes...
Maintaining a lesson-learned repository allows us to acquire the benefits of past projects' similar experiences, understanding the best way to resolve problems or situations that at already occurred; and also providing insight to improve the manner we do things. Saving Changes...
Latha Thamma reddiSr Product and Portfolio Management (Automation Innovation)| DXC TechnologyMckinney, Tx, United States
