Organization wide Lessons from ‘Project Lessons Learned’

One of the last documents to be completed and filed in a Project is the ‘Lessons Learned’ document. Coming in last, at times it is treated with the least importance or just rushed through. The truth is the other way round.

The objective of the Lessons Learned document is to capture whatever went right and whatever went wrong in the Project as well as the Lessons these successes and failures teach- Lessons which can help future projects. Any prudent Project Manager will make it a point to note the Lessons all through the life of the Project-at every important moment of the project- ?right from its initiation to its closing.

At the initiation stage, it could be about the challenges with the Statement of Work or Business Case, Sponsor support, pre- assigned resources and the Project Charter.

The Planning stage could have multiple lessons to learn from- ease of finding and populating experienced resources, Stakeholder support, the methodology followed and team co-operation.

Project Execution and Project Monitoring & Controlling could have a lot to say about surprises and shocks surrounding resource availability, Scope Creep, Resource Manager support, what was not anticipated or missed in the plans.

In a Product Commercialization Project, my team had a shock finding while elicitating requirements from some key stakeholders-very very contrary to our assumptions. This led to the Product price to be revisited and ultimately the Product and Promotion being re-designed to keep up with the Price Point. We went from Mid price segment to Premium- a market segment waiting to be discovered.

?In another project, we found one influential stakeholder to be the cause for most of the Scope Creeps. This could be concluded only from continuous observation and interaction.

?When launching a set of services for company employees, my team, found (to our surprise) one mode of communication to be more effective than others!

?In summary, I will say that Lessons Learned can be captured entirely only if captured regularly and continuously.

?In an Agile Project using Scrum framework, Learnings are captured in every sprint as ‘Retrospect Sprint’ and again at the end of the Project as ‘Retrospect Project’.

The benefits that ‘Lessons Learned’ document provides is ?humongous for future projects and Project Managers. For example, When I walked in as an external Project Manager, knowledge about the organization’s overall risk appetite ?and tolerance towards certain types of risks (gained from Lessons on a previous project) helped me manage risks on my project successfully- thanks to my predecessor.

Drawing a parallel from the learnings on a Project to the ‘Learning and Development’ function in an organization, I will say that L&D cannot be taken as a responsibility of just one department (usually L&D comes under the HR department). Learning and?innovation happen all across the organization – in every department and function all the time. The challenge is to capture the opportunity and develop a set of best practices which add value. Hence L&D needs to be more of a culture which pervades the organization.

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