Mark Price Perry
Business Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT International
Orlando, Fl, United States
Dear Katherine, kudos to you! A lessons learned database can offer tremendous value and process improvement insight to the project office as well as any business department. Two quick thoughts come to mind. First, take a moment to determine if you are focusing on "lessons observed" or "lessons learned". There is a difference and it is not that subtle. Often times, the project manager will document the observed problem quite well, but then the actual improvement recommendation and hand-off to management doesn't quite take place. For this reason, many project organizations seek to have a post-closing process step called Continuous Improvement in which lessons learned are inputs to a Continuous Improvement recommendation that is communicated to management and acted upon accordingly. As part of this slightly more encompassing approach, you can use your database to track not only the lessons learned metrics, but also such things as 1) was a continuous improvement recommendation developed, 2) presented to management, 3) what were the assessed benefits of the suggestion, 4) date accepted, 5) date implemented, and 6) was a continuous improvement award or bonus given to the initiator. Hence, I would suggest that if it is possible you rename and position your effort as a Continuous Improvement database and not just lessons learned. It will drive to what you want to achieve, facilitate buy-in, and help to establish a culture of continuous improvement including recognition and awards. Second, the database doesn't have to be that complex. You can use whatever collaboration platform that your organization already has in place, knows, and uses. This can be something elegant like SharePoint, Lotus, etc. or implemented simply using a project office LAN shared folder. You might consider having a database or template for the index of the continuous improvement submissions and then also maintain and provide access to the completed continuous improvement recommendations which can be a database driven or a simple template in MS Word or Excel for example. Lastly, you can design and build this yourself or you may wish to look at some of the easy to setup, high quality, attractively priced vendor packages for PM, Continuous Improvement, etc. Three that come to mind in alphabetically order are PMCoP by PM Solutions, Processes On Demand by BOT International, and Tensteps by Tenstep. All the best. -- Mark Perry, VP of Customer Care, BOT International
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