Lessons Learned
Lessons learned are a project management tool for continuous improvement. The lessons learned main goal is to learn from the past. The teams must collect lessons, in retrospective sessions or other types of meetings carried out at the end of a project or phase, and collect the positive and negative aspects of the project. The team must then resume and register that information in the lessons learned register to be available for the next phases or future projects. The team can then complement the work with improvement actions and suggestions to solve the issues and promote positive opportunities.
The lessons learned exercise should be a continuous effort, this will improve team effectiveness and productivity. Another positive aspect of the lessons is that allow the organization to have better and more actual information available for the next projects or phases. And let’s not forget, that the information should be available for everyone, not just for the persons allocated to a specific project.
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Process of Preparing Lessons Learned
There is not just one process to create and update lessons learned. The processes can be something like this:
Identify positive and negative points
It’s always easier to register the negative aspects, but is also important to collect the positive aspects of the project. The team must collect the positive aspects so they can be repeated and stimulated in the future. The team should also collect and analyze the negative aspects to avoid them in the future.
Besides the event, the team should also collect information regarding the cause and the consequences of each experience. It will be much easier to avoid negative experiences and enhance positive experiences if we know what has caused them and what are the consequences.
Team members should feel secure about sharing their experiences. Without that safe environment, the information may not be fully truthful and not fully communicated.
The team should collect lessons throughout the project and not just at the end of a phase or the project. Some lessons can be useful for other teams. Other lessons can be useful for the next phases of the project. For example, imagine that a supplier is taking more time to deliver the products. If this supplier would also supply other projects or other products for your project in future phases you would already know and could take measures to avoid those delays. Is also important to collect lessons learned frequently because the team may forget them or at least some aspects of the experience and the information could not be complete.