Applying Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned

Kristin Jones Social Media Specialist III| PMI Newtown Square, Pa, United States

Do you sometimes feel like your projects could have gone better? How do you collect and apply lessons learned?

Posted: May 21, 2015 4:34 PM

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Lan Wolfkind Business System Solutions Architect| Syndetic Global Solutions LLC San Diego, Ca, United States

As your organization grows, Lessons Learned and Risk Management should be incorporated into your organization's culture so you can stay competitive in the marketplace. There are system tools that allow you to store and share these information. The real question is: how important is "lessons learned" and can you benefit from them?

Posted: May 29, 2015 1:23 PM

D. Briggs Irving, Tx, United States

Catherine, Lan and others pointed to the thorny issue of imbedding Lessons Learnt on future projects. Most often, Lessons Learnt point out "things" which should change. "Things" many be as straightforward as templates or procedures, but may be as complex as organizational structure and culture. I encourage teams to develop Improvement Plans which empower this change process.

One message I emphasize with program managers and project managers is that an Improvement Plan is a critically important deliverable of the project Closeout process. Not cementing the Lessons Learnt into an Improvement Plan most likely translates into no ownership of actions and thus limited realization of the benefits of the Lessons Learnt.

The Improvement Plan would include a set of actions, clearly identified owners, a timeline to imbed, and metrics to be tested by an Assurance process in future programs/projects.

Successful Improvement Plans incorporate a timeline with a long tail, to effectively imbed the change. Successful Improvement Plans allow for cross-functional inputs and require the PMO to manage interfaces between engineering, contracts, risk, project services, legal and other functions in order to effect the changes called out by the Lessons Learnt.

For more mature project organizations, I encourage upgrading the various Improvement Plans across the program into a Learning Curve Plan, with the objective of advancing up the Maturity Curve for developing and delivering projects.

Posted: Jul 11, 2015 8:55 PM

Rodrigo Dantas Santiago PM I| Flextronics International Tecnologia LTDA Sorocaba, Sp, Brazil

May 26, 2015 11:56 AM

Replying to Russell Geake

...

Lessons learned and adapting to improve project performance are key to any organisation wanting to implement projects successfully.

While a lessons learned log is the obvious place to start, so often, they are used as to tick a box in the standard process. Unless the lessons are stored centrally (possibly but not exclusively within a PMO) and are easily accessible for new projects they are virtually pointless. With contractors and transient teams and the unique nature of projects, making them count really isn't easy. You would find very few organisations that sit down a new PM and give them a Lessons Learned log to read before they crack on with the latest project, many don't even go through their standard processes, like purchasing, reporting and documentation.

Over the years, I have kept a fairly good list of lessons learned and I'm sure I've put many of them into practice on follow-on projects, but whether the organisations have reaped the same benefits - I honestly don't know.

Ultimately this is one of the key benefits of the PMO - to support the effective delivery of projects, ideally they should own the LLL and facilitate its integration into future projects, supporting both permanent and contract staff.

@RGeake

Hi Russell, this is exactly what I'm looking for. I'm implementing a LL in my company and I'm trying to find out the better way (specially) to bring up data when it's necessary but what I'm finding is same samples in power point, email, MoM, etc but I realized that it's not efficient when we are getting information to start a new project. First we need to get only LL related to the Charter that you need to start. I want to avoid a lot of LL that is not linked to my project. So, my objective is create a process where PM's can add their LL and share with all company. When it's necessary I can have a way to bring all information for the project that I will start and not all data in our LL database.

Posted: Feb 24, 2017 10:43 AM

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