You should have gotten enough ideas from this article. Next, explain the meeting rules. Attendees should understand they are supposed to be constructive , whether they liked the project or not.
Everybody is asked to give their feedback on the following questions:. You have to decide how to record the results. In a small group you would just enter the feedback in an Excel sheet.
With a larger audience, you would normally use flip charts or white boards where team members record their thoughts. Now that everybody knows the process, they can get to work and write down whatever is on their mind. Of course, you as the project manager are not excluded from the process. If you are doing the lessons learned with the entire project team, have one or two team representatives present the results in a summarized form.
They will briefly go through all notes and talk about the most frequently mentioned points: Many team members said they were unhappy with the way the product training was done. OK, hopefully you will also get positive feedback.
Say a few kind words and thank the attendees for their participation. I want to help you with your mindset for a project review. Suppose you are the project leader and you are going to have your first lessons learned workshop.
Then there are a couple of things you should keep in mind. A conflict with a stakeholder or a critical step you forgot to take care of. Although this is understandable, it is also not very helpful. I suggest you accept whatever bad things have happened and focus instead on things you have learned and the things that went well. There will always be people criticizing: Even the best and most respected project managers face criticism.
Therefore, it is natural for people to tell you what you should have done differently. Be open to learn: Accept you may not now the best approach for everything. There may be better ways to plan or to conduct certain project tasks. Well, it is important to write a lessons learned report to record the desired outcomes and solutions for all future projects. In this way, it helps in avoiding the same mistakes again.
The lessons learned report from the previous projects can be viewed and analyzed before starting a new project to remember the mistakes that are not to be made. Not only this, a lessons learned report is helpful throughout the same project as well.
Therefore, it is important to write and review lessons learned report. When you plan to write a lessons learned report for your project, an important thing to consider is that which will be the healthiest and best steps to write it.
To ease that for you, we have developed some beneficial steps that can help you along the way. So the 12 easy steps for writing a lessons learned report are:. To make effective lessons, learned report, taking help from different project documents that are already prepared is very beneficial.
Such reports provide a documented piece on all the ups and downs faced in the project. It might be some cost calculation report; resources report, project progress report or an analysis report.
As these reports contain all the important data regarding the project, there must be important findings and solutions to the potential risks that you can include in the lessons learned report. Thus, reading all the important project documents and utilizing them in the best possible way is a key step to draw a lessons learned report. Whenever you come across something that you think is important to include in a lessons learned report, wait a minute.
Before doing that, assess the goals and objectives of the project as well as of the lessons learned report to make sure they are healthy for the overall project framework. If there is a lesson that is important but is not relevant to the core goals and objectives of the project, you must not include it in a lessons learned report. In order to ensure whether any learned lesson is feasible to be a part of the report, check:. When you have positive answers to this kind of questions, you have well assessed the goals and objectives.
You can then include those lessons learned in the report. Now, the next step is to find your audience. At times, you are not clear of the audience you are targeting with the lessons learned report. Evaluate your project with a lessons learned template to capture the following details:. Regardless of your line of business, a project management lessons learned template can help guide you through the steps of a post-project assessment.
You can use those lessons to improve the planning, execution, and all-around success rate of your future projects. Read our guide to project management lessons learned for more tips and details.
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Try Smartsheet for free, today. Get a Free Smartsheet Demo. In This Article. Project Management Lessons Learned Template. Lessons Learned Log Template. Project Lessons Learned Survey Template. Project Lessons Learned Checklist Template. Project Lessons Learned Presentation Template. Software Project Lessons Learned Template. Project Lessons Learned Report Example. What Is a Lessons Learned Template?
By not maximizing on project successes, we miss opportunities to implement good processes and practices to successfully complete existing and future work. Most project managers know the importance of capturing lessons learned; it is good for the team, organization, existing and future projects. Lessons learned are the documented information that reflects both the positive and negative experiences of a project. However, we are all at different levels of lessons learned utilization.
Some of us do not routinely capture lessons learned because there is no defined lessons learned process in place. Or we capture lessons learned at the end of a project and never do anything with them. Or finally, we capture lessons learned, review them prior to starting new projects but we do not generate metrics addressing the frequency of key word occurrence in failed or successful projects.
This paper explores the different levels of lessons learned and provides solutions to assist with the transition from your current level to the next level. Learning occurs on every project.
Lessons learned is the learning gained from the process of performing the project PMI, , p. We learn from our own project experiences as well as the experiences of others. Project managers, team members and leadership can all participate in the lessons learned sessions, review the lessons learned reports and make decisions on how to use the knowledge gained.
Sharing lessons learned among project team members prevents an organization from repeating the same mistakes and also allows them to take advantage of organizational best practices. Innovative approaches and good work practices can be shared with others. Lessons learned can be used to improve future projects and future stages of current projects.
It is not necessary to wait until the end of the project for the learning to occur. Lessons can be identified at any point during the project. A lessons learned session should be conducted at different time frames based on the criticality and complexity of the project.
Key times are at the end of the project, at the end of each phase and real time — when you learn the lesson. If you wait until the end the project for a large project you miss some of the key lessons. Because of the time that has elapsed, project team members may forget some of the things they learned or team members assigned to the project in the early phases may no longer be part of the project during the later phases.
The best time to begin discussing lessons learned is during the project kick-off meeting. At level 1 organizations are not routinely capturing lessons learned partly because there is no defined process in place. Lessons learned are handled on a project by project basis with no standardized tools or consistency among projects. At a minimum level 1 organizations may have a meeting where lessons learned are discussed and produce a report summarizing the findings.
This report is then shared with the immediate project stakeholders. The purpose of a lessons learned process is to define the activities required to successfully capture and use lessons learned.
The lessons learned process shown in Exhibit 1 includes five steps: identify, document, analyze, store and retrieve. These steps are consistent for all three levels; however, the tools and techniques become more involved with each level.
Regardless of the level, it is important for the team to view lessons learned as constructive. Leadership should encourage project stakeholders to use the process, tools and results.
Step 1 of the lessons learned process is to identify comments and recommendations that could be valuable for future projects. The two activities for identifying lessons learned are: 1 prepare for lessons learned session and conduct lessons learned session.
The person who will be facilitating the lessons learned session should prepare in advance. In preparation for the lessons learned session the facilitator should have the participants complete a project survey. The project survey will help the participants to be better prepared to respond during the lessons learned session and will also give them the opportunity to provide input if they are unable to attend. The project survey should be organized by category.
The use of categories will ensure key information is not missed and will later help to focus the discussion.
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