by Josh
Lessons Learned by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Flickr
“Lessons Learned” gets thrown around a lot as something we should be “doing” as project managers. In most cases however, the “what to do” here is fairly fuzzy and inconsistent. I’m guilty of verbally recognizing lessons learned throughout a project, but never really doing what should be done to document them properly, validate the conclusions, or take action so they are implemented in the future.
In an effort to get better at this and share with everyone else, I’ve created a Google document template to help document, understand, validate, and act on lessons learned. There is a sample filled out, and I hope you will click the link at the top to share your suggestions for improving the template.
I will update the template over time as I get feedback, because one of my lessons learned is that progressive elaboration is awesome!
Download the template here:
http://pmStudent.com/LLActions-xls
Suggest improvements below:
6 Comments
Josh Nankivel May 02 2009 14:14 pm
Hmm...I have no idea Derek. I'll have to look into that one!
Bill DuncanMay 4, 2009 4:39 am
Josh –
Based on what I’ve seen from my clients, there are 3 major obstacles to acting on lessons learned:
– The way the info is stored. It needs to be filed by topic, not by project name, and cross-referenced. If I can’t find a lesson, I can’t apply it.
– It needs to be done at the end of every phase, not just at the end of the project. Teams will both forget the lessons from early in the project and consider them less significant.
– Someone from senior management needs to be present and needs to accept responsibility for addressing the lessons learned that require organizational responses. If not, the teams get tired of documenting the same lessons over and over again and lose respect for the practice.
Duncan
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Derek HuetherMay 2, 2009 1:38 pm
Josh, I just added a comment to your Lessons Learned template.
I’m pretty sure you get PDU credit for creating the template and facilitating a round table discussion.
Do you agree?
Regards,
Derek