Best practice | Lessons learned

Scrutiny Councillors should ensure that “lessons are learned from major projects, key contracts, and from failures of major suppliers to the public sector”.

Capturing lessons learned

Lessons learned is a useful means of sharing information from previous programmes and projects with others. Lessons are usually presented in the form of recommendations on the way forward or highlighting where potential improvements or modifications could be applied.

Programmes or projects where methods such as Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) or PRINCE2 are used are required to produce formal lessons learned as part of a structured approach.

Purpose of sharing lessons

The purpose of recording and sharing lessons learned includes:

avoiding making the same mistakes as others
improving on current delivery standards by adopting proven good practice
responding to changes in the programme and project management environment including new government priorities, initiatives, and strategies
contributing to organisational growth and maturity by effecting long-term improvements in the way an organisation embeds and shares programme and project management best practice.

Roles and responsibilities for reporting lessons learned

Under the direction of the senior responsible owner and management board, the programme manager or project manager is responsible for:

recording and collating lessons learned material throughout the programme or project lifecycle
producing a lessons learned report.

For projects, this should form part of the project evaluation review document.

Process

Step 1: Identify lessons learned

Step one of the lessons learned process is to identify comments and recommendations that could be valuable for future projects.

Prepare for 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 it will also give them the opportunity to provide input if they are unable to attend.

The project survey should be organised by category. The use of categories will ensure key information is not missed and will later help to focus the discussion. Standard categories for each project should be defined and additional categories specific to a project can be added. Suggested categories include project management, resources, technical, communication, business processes, requirements, design and build, testing, implementation, and external areas. These categories can be subdivided into more detailed categories. For example, project management can be divided into the process groups: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. Planning can then be further divided into project schedule, risk analysis, etc. A simple approach is to begin with a few categories such as project management, resources, technical, and external areas, and then add more categories as needed.

The project survey should also include specific questions for each category. These responses will be used by the lessons learned facilitator to guide the discussion during the lessons learned session. Three key questions should be included as part of the survey: 1) What went right? 2) What went wrong? and 3) What needs to be improved?

Lessons learned session

A lessons learned session focuses on identifying project success and project failures, and includes recommendations to improve future performance on projects. Project managers have a professional obligation to conduct lessons learned sessions for all projects with key internal and external stakeholders, particularly if the project yielded less than desirable results (PMI, 2004, p. 230). The lessons learned session is a very important part of the lessons learned process. If the session is not successful, the organisation loses out on the lessons learned opportunity.

To obtain optimum results, the lessons learned sessions should be facilitated by someone other than the project manager. If the project manager chooses to facilitate the session, the project survey results should be summarised by someone other than the project manager and shared with the participants during the session. This will ensure the all the relevant items are included in the discussion. The facilitator should review key documents and project survey results, and then prepare a list of questions specific to the project. The facilitator should use lessons learned categories during the session to help focus the participants thinking and discussion. Finally, the facilitator should always ask the three key questions.

What went right?
What went wrong?
What needs to be improved?

Step 2: Document lessons learned

Step two of the lessons learned process is to document and share findings.

After lessons learned are captured, they should be reported to project stakeholders. Different types of reports can be produced based on the audience. The detailed lessons learned report consists of the data captured during the lessons learned session and any additional input from participants who were not able to attend. The facilitator should distribute the detailed lessons learned report to all participants, and participants should be given time to respond to the accuracy of the report. After the report is finalised, the entire project team should receive a copy, even if they did not participate in the lessons learned session. The final report should be stored with the other project documentation.

The facilitator should prepare a summary for leadership. This report should present an overview of the lessons learned process and a summary of project strengths – what went well, project weaknesses – what went wrong, and recommendations – what we need to improve. The detailed report can be included as an attachment or made available in the event leadership needs more information.

Step 3: Analyse lessons learned

Step three of the lessons learned process is to analyse and organise the lessons learned for application of results. At level 1, analysis is more informal as the team decides what can be done with the lessons learned. Information is shared with other teams during organisational meetings. Project management process improvements or training needs are often identified as a result of lessons learned recommendations.

Step 4: Store lessons learned

Step four of the lessons learned process is to store in a repository. At level 1, organisations do not have a dedicated lessons learned repository in place. Lessons learned documents are stored along with other project documents, normally on a shared drive or in some form of project library. There is no easy means of retrieving the lessons. Organisations often set up a lessons learned folder on the shared drive to make the lessons learned reports available to other project teams.

Step 5: Retrieve lessons learned

Step five of the lessons learned process is to retrieve for use on current projects. This step is rarely used at level 1. Although lessons learned reports are stored on a shared drive, without key-word search capability, it is difficult to retrieve the appropriate lesson.