Project Lessons Learned

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Project Lessons Learned

One of the greatest contributions of a PM to an organization is the set of lessons learned.
After every project concludes, a formal meeting with all of the team members should be conducted and both good and bad experiences should be duly written down in a document that should be a part of the project.
But it does not end there. There should be a kind of library of lessons learned from each project implemented in the organization, to save time and effort and implement best practices born from within the organization.

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		2 Jim Combs, USA
	Are Project Lessons Observed? Does anyone have a proven successful way of incorporating lessons learned? It seems projects continue to make the same mistakes again and again...

		2 Sam Abiem, Nigeria
	The Importance of Documenting Project Lessons Learned Lessons learned is indeed a very important component of PM that is often overlooked by many organizations. Though it's outside the project design cycle, it needs to be incorporated in the evaluation phase. It is also critical at the closure of project. This prepares managers to better manage subsequent projects building on such lessons, whether positive or negative. Every project has lessons that an organization can build on in subsequent projects.

		2 Sankar, India
	Recording, Storing and Retreiving Project Lessons Recording lessons learned is one aspect, and equally important is the storage and retrieval mechanism! I personally think an organization should give the right emphasis to knowledge management and project lessons should be part of managing this knowledge, with the right categorization.

		3 Eduardo Rodriguez Ringach Consultant, Spain
	Best Practices for Storing and Reusing Lessons Learned: Storytelling and Checklist I've seen two totally different successful strategies for caputuring and sharing lessons learned from projects: 1. Storytelling: capturing the nuances of the lessons in a narrative way, or even better by using multimedia tools, best in the own words of the protagonists. 2. Checklist: integrate lessons learned in a mandatory checklist to be filled in for every new project.

		1 David Dicanot Analyst, France
	Best Practices for Storing and Reusing Lessons Learned: Coaching Hello I share the idea that same mistakes in project management occur again and again. The main reason to my mind is the non application of fundamentals in project management, that is the subject of another stream. Formalised best practices are good, but not efficient enough, and could be replaced or complemented by coaching by a senior project manager. This role could be fulfilled by a programme director (if available) to avoid the cost hiring an external coach.

		2 James07 Business Consultant, India
	How to Prepare for the Post-Project Evaluation Successful project managers lay the groundwork for repeating on future projects what worked on past ones (and avoiding what didn’t) by conducting a post-project evaluation. A post-project evaluation (also called a post-project review or lessons learned) is an assessment of project results, activities, and processes that allows you to: Recognize project achievements and acknowledge people’s work. Identify techniques and approaches that worked, and devise steps to ensure they’re used in the future. Identify techniques and approaches that didn’t work, and devise steps to ensure they aren’t used again in the future. A project postmortem is another term for post-project evaluation.