Betsy GreenOnboarding Manager| TownNews.comMoline, Il, United States
Hi, everyone. I work as an IT Project Manager for an insurance company. One of my goals is to improve the way my company utilizes lessons learned.
Our current process is this: at the end of each project phase, project team members complete a survey to capture successes and areas of improvement. This allows the team/PM to make immediate improvements, before the project is over. Then, as part of the closing process, we send another survey and have a Lessons Learned meeting in which we capture the same. Lessons learned are both compiled in a spreadsheet and included in a Project Close Report. Finally, at our monthly IT department meetings, the PM reviews Lessons Learned so that everyone - not just those on the project team - can hear them.
This is a good start, but I would like to improve the way Lessons Learned are used as an organizational project asset, especially across multiple project managers. For example, if I were to kick off a new project, I'd want to begin by reviewing Lessons Learned from relevant past projects. The only way right now I'd know which past projects to review would be largely personal memory and guesswork - obviously flawed.
I'd love to hear what other PMs do to make Lessons Learned accessible and useful across multiple projects and PMs.
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