Continuous learning is an important in the development of the project management process. The project management process offers opportunities to learn from what could not have been planned and for what could have been better.
When a project completes, the project manager should not lose the opportunity to gather feedback from the project team and stakeholders. This feedback will serve as lessons learned for future projects as the project manager looks to apply those lessons learned to new projects.
This will ensure your organization will keep learning from past projects and improving new ones. Since learning is a continuous process for everyone, expect lessons learned to always be a part of the project management lifecycle.
Here are a few tips to prepare your Lessons Learned:
- Give participants the opportunity to provide feedback anonymously
- Document a checklist of questions that allow you to gather information about how well the project performed and what could be improved
- Provide choices to respond to each question when gathering feedback to allow you to produce metrics from the responses
- For example:
Question: How clearly defined were the objectives for this project?
Answer: Very, Somewhat , Not at All, or Not Applicable
- Email surveys like www.surveymonkey.com can be helpful
- Do not wait too long after the project is complete to gather your lessons learned.
- Provide free form comment sections in your lesson learned survey
- Review and discuss the findings of your lessons learned with the project team and stakeholders
Look for a Lessons Learned templates at www.ThinkITProjectManagement.com Project Templates/Project Closure
Cheers!
