The reason for Lessons Learned is to improve the quality of processes or products. This can only be done with an increase in individual and organizational knowledge. There are tried and true methods of gathering and implementing Lessons Learned. Mature organizations are cited as regularly conducting Lessons Learned activities while less experienced ones take a hit-or-miss approach to these activities.

Whether it is being done rigorously or ad hoc, the true test is in the output of the organization. If information is gathered, but poorly assimilated into processes or performance then it’s just that: information or data. What methods can be used to increase the probability that what was learned, both positive and negative, will be used to vastly improve quality? This session will shed light on how organizations learn and innovative Lessons Learned tactics that will positively influence the organization’s outcomes.

The Lessons Learned references in the most prominent project management literature are as follows:

·      The PMBOK states that lessons learned should be gathered at the end of the project phases and reviewed during planning. 

·      OPM3 mentions lessons learned at a high level.

·      Prince 2 states that lessons learned should be captured in a log and published in a collated report. 

·      Finally, PMI recently published the Post-Project Reviews to Gain Effective Lessons Learned book which contains an assortment of data regarding the importance of a robust lessons learned practice, and statistics on how organizations learn and why it’s difficult to capture and leverage lessons learned.

While all of the above mentioned publications are useful, they don’t provide an innovative, how-to guide for capturing and leveraging lessons learned.  The theme of this session is “do it early, do it often”, and “make it stick.”  Attendees will be exposed to Lessons Learned specific activities for every phase of the project life-cycle while being encouraged to abandon the “post syndrome” of addressing lessons learned only after the fact, i.e. at the end of a project phase or the end of the project.

The session begins with defining lessons learned as organizational knowledge, and explores the cost of lost knowledge when project resources are re-assigned to other projects. The how-to portion of the discourse maps the lessons learned activities of gather and implement to the five project management process groups: Initiation, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing.  Finally, innovative methods, along with traditional ones, for gathering and implementing at each phase are discussed. 

Previous participants of the lecture have commented that they feel armed to improve, and in some cases implement, their lessons learned process.

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