The Project Retrospective: Capturing Lessons Learned

Wednesday, December 30, 2009 by Ty Kiisel

Vince Lombardi said, "Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence."

I've observed that the most unused project management best practice is the retrospective.  It's been said that those who refuse to learn from history are destined to repeat it, I think that also applies to project management successes and failures. 

I once worked with a project leader who was so committed to success that he made sure we met as a team after every project to discuss what we did well and where we could improve.  He believed Jack Welch when he said, "I've learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success."  What's more, he willingly took constructive criticism himself—which made it easier for the rest of the team to do the same.

As a team, we knew that the retrospective process was an important tool to help us improve.  This project leader made it a point to celebrate our successes and learn from our defeats. 

I believe that successfully managing projects is more of an art than a science.  Regardless of your preferred project and portfolio management methodology, much of work management success is the result of implementing successful practices learned while working on real projects.  The ability to apply the successful practices is easy, but as former Dallas Cowboy football coach Tom Landry said, "I've learned that something constructive comes from every defeat."

Maybe it's the approaching new year that has caused me to contemplate the project retrospective, but now is as good a time as any to commit to a regular program of capturing and applying the lessons learned from every project.

As Oprah Winfrey has said, "Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right."

Happy New Year everyone.
 

Comments for The Project Retrospective: Capturing Lessons Learned

Wednesday, December 30, 2009 by Lee Jorgenson:
Great post, Ty! There's so much to gain from looking at our past failures and successes. Thanks for reminding us how important that is!
Monday, January 4, 2010 by Mark:
I am looking into establishing a lessons learned program for a large group of project managers (75 people). Do you have any expriance in establishing an effective approach to capturing lessons learned for future reference?
Monday, January 4, 2010 by Ty:
Mark, I think there are two things to consider: 1. The technology you use for capturing what actually happened, and 2. The actual review process. Capturing project data and creating an audit trail helps evaluate what happened during a project. There should be a document trail, approval trail, captured time-line, as well as a trail of project communication. Some project management software enables you to template successful processes and implement a standardized best practices. The right software can do a lot to help with the data associated with a retrospective, but when all is said an done, the most important part of a project retrospective, in my opinion, is sitting down with everyone on the team and honestly evaluating the successes and failures. To be successful, the team needs to put ego and emotion aside and objectively look at where the project was successful and where it struggled. There is always room for improvement. The challenge for most teams lies in facing criticism for the sake of improvement. I have observed that if leaders are willing to face some of their weaknesses, the team will usually follow suit. Project teams are where the rubber hits the road, if you can successfully establish a practice of regular and honest project retrospective, you will see regular improvement. Out team established a practice of setting 2 or 3 improvement goals for every project gleaned from discussions in our project retrospectives. We posted them publicly, to remind everyone of what they were. I have found this to be very effective. 2-3 improvement goals is a good and achievable number to work for on each project. I hope this helps.

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