IT'S FINALLY OVER. MISTAKES WERE MADE. DEADLINES WERE MISSED.
But the “project from hell” is done. And now it's time to move on. First, though, a warning: History has an eerie way of repeating itself.
If the same mistakes creep up time and time again, organizations “may find they are not growing in their project management expertise,” says Sandra F. Rowe, PMP, senior project manager at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Detroit, Michigan, USA. She is also the author of Project Management for Small Projects [Management Concepts, 2007].
Simply taking note of the past isn't enough. Organizations must integrate past experiences into their current and future projects. That includes generating metrics to track how often the same old issues arise in both projects that succeed and those that flop. Companies that skip this step may miss out on the opportunity to implement good practices—and weed out bad ones.
IN THE MOMENT
Project managers should always be prepared to recognize a lessons-learned moment, Ms. Rowe says. Those instances may occur when the team is frustrated and airing complaints outside team meetings, or it may come at the end of a project phase when team members see room for improvement. They can even spring up mid-project if things are veering off course and re-planning is needed to get back on track.
At points like these, it's time to take a look at what caused the problems and what can be done to smooth the process going forward, Ms. Rowe says.
But recognition is only part of the equation. It's just as important to document experiences and thoughts to help others in the future. And organizations have to establish a formal process for capturing them.
Those steps include:
» Identify comments and recommendations that can be valuable for future projects
» Document and share findings
» Analyze and organize the lessons for later application
» Store findings in a repository
» Retrieve the lessons for use on current projects.
Ms. Rowe suggests kicking off the process by requiring each participant to complete a project evaluation. PMI's Troubled Projects Specific Interest Group (SIG)—of which Ms. Rowe is a board member—recently drafted a sample form. It asks team members to rate things such as:
» Were the project vision, objectives, requirements, assumptions and constraints clear?
» Were the schedule duration and/or client expectations realistic?
» Were project sponsors and project clients communicated with regularly?
» Were they able to clearly understand the project status?
Next, a facilitator—usually someone other than the project manager because of his or her closeness to the subject matter—should use the responses to guide the discussion. This person should start by asking three key questions:
1. What went right?
2. What went wrong?
3. What needs to be improved?
And although participants should feel free to criticize the process, they should never criticize other members of the team. “This should not become a finger-pointing session,” Ms. Rowe says.
Team members need to both acknowledge things that went well as well as those that caused frustrations, and discuss how they can be better handled in the future, says Joerg-Martin Hohberg, Ph.D., quality manager, IUB Engineering Services Ltd., Berne, Switzerland.
The moderator should first focus on what went right, and then gently move into the problem areas. If the discussion kicks off with what went wrong, “everybody gets defensive,” he says.
Like Ms. Rowe, Dr. Hohberg suggests using a neutral person to conduct the sessions “to break up barriers of hierarchical thinking.” This person must also be able to deal with people's “emotions and cultural backgrounds.”
NOW WHAT?
Once the lessons learned have been identified, they need to be documented and reported to stakeholders, Ms. Rowe says. As part of that, the facilitator should prepare a summary for the organization's leadership and a detailed report to be distributed to the session participants.
These lessons should then be analyzed and the results shared with other project teams. In the best-case scenario, the organization should appoint a team to analyze the results, identify best practices, and incorporate them into existing processes or use them to improve processes already in place. The findings also might result in a call for additional training or for metrics to be established.
After lessons learned have been identified, analyzed and shared, they should be moved into a repository where anyone can retrieve them. And the information should follow consistent procedures and forms, so it's easier to identify reoccur-ring issues and input into a searchable repository using set keywords.
Storing lessons learned is already starting to pay dividends at R.W. Smith & Co., a San Diego, California, USA-based provider of commercial kitchen design, installation and equipment. In the past, project information was passed down from person to person via word-of-mouth with no backup documentation, says Eric Gildenhuys, general manager of the contract and design division at the company.
But not all of the information made its way to the right people. For instance, if the general contractor was delayed in starting installation or fabricators didn't build the equipment as specified, these issues weren't always communicated to the relevant parties. And that impacted the company's bottom line.
Now the company is turning to software to help formalize the process and retain lessons learned in an online format. And project managers can now use field reports to make note of problems as they arise, Mr. Gildenhuys says.
THE LEARNING PROCESS
Ideally, the catalyst to capture lessons learned should come from the top ranks of an organization, Ms. Rowe says. “To develop and sustain a lessons learned culture, leadership has to be involved.”
If that's not the case, project managers can implement it within their realm of control. “This bottom-up approach will be slower to institutionalize, but the success can be shared with other project managers,” she adds.
Project managers then can take their successes to top management and use those to lobby for change.
Either way, once an organization has established a repository of lessons learned, the database must be maintained, updated and cleared out periodically. As an organization embraces a lessons learned culture, some of that knowledge will eventually be engrained into everyday procedures. The ultimate goal, Ms. Rowe says, is that “certain things will become second nature, and some lessons learned will become best practices.” PM