September’s here, and it’s back to school.
Time to do our homework and learn from our projects!

 

It is a recognized fact in project management that “project reports” and “post mortems”, also known as “lessons learned”, are highly beneficial. Once again they have to be done properly, so here in a few lines is a description of some related best practices.

Let’s start with a definition. Lesson: profitable teaching derived from a mistake or an event. Learning a lesson from an error made. I learned my lesson, so I will no longer make that mistake again. So, we have to pay special attention to two components: first, deriving a teaching and second, applying that lesson.

 

Why conduct a post mortem?

The goal of such an exercise is to highlight both achievements so they can be repeated and failures so they can be avoided under similar circumstances.

The exercise also has to address the aspects of project management and the quality of the solution developed by the project.

Attention! The issue here is not to turn this exercise into a witch hunt for guilty parties or build a list of accusations. What is important is to understand the cause-and-effect relationships and identify ways of optimizing practices.

How is that done?

Many ways exist to discover your lessons. You can use more or less formal meetings led by a facilitator. You can also send out questionnaires followed by an analysis of the responses and sharing of the conclusions. The topics can be open ended or guided.

One trick for giving the exercise a positive spin is to ask participants to congratulate other members of the team on their achievements.

In every case, you must ask the following question: Is it worth doing this exercise anonymously or in sub-groups so the real questions can emerge?

Also, to understand the different viewpoints, it may be interesting to analyze the results based on various sources, that is, from the perspective of project team members, clients and users, or other stakeholders.

Making your lessons learned profitable requires sharing and communicating them. What good is it doing the exercise if the results are not exploited? Experience shows that placing a document in a common repository or on the intranet has no conclusive result. More dynamic means need to be used: lunch meetings, sharing of learning during the initiation of subsequent projects, etc.

More effectively, if a project management office has been set up in the organization, then it should systematically take those new lessons learned into account in its practices and standards.

How much is done and when is it done?

The recommendation is to conduct a post mortem at the end of every project so your lessons learned can be used on future projects. But why not be even more ambitious? Why not do the exercise during every phase, or even when every project component is delivered? That will allow the project team to constantly improve its performance as the project moves forward.

Who is asked to participate and who facilitates?

All of the project’s stakeholders should be involved in the exercise and, as much as possible, at the same time. If there are too many participants or you see a risk of slippage, or simply to be sure everyone feels free to express themselves, it may be appropriate to hold sessions with sub-groups.

Who should facilitate such meetings? Definitely not the project manager, who might have problems seeing everything objectively. Why not ask a “non participant” to the project. Someone neutral, who was not in contact with the project’s participants? Better yet, a facilitator with solid experience in this type of exercise. That way you can maximize what is being learned.

Conducting post mortems means knowing how to do your homework! Even better, conducting such exercises means transferring sustainable benefits to the organization.

Got some feedback about what we have to say? Want to tell us about your post mortem story and the lessons you learned? We are always interested in reading or listening to your opinion. info@brioconseils.com