Throughout a project there are a lot of lessons learnt. In addition to having the Project Closure document in writing it is advisable to have a Project Closure Review or Post Implementation Review meeting.

Usually during a Project closure there will be several key areas to address such as some outstanding items on the project from the customer’s perspective, project related contract and legal commitments, some accounting variances on the budget that needs to be sorted out, release of resources etc. At this stage all records related to the project have to be completed and archived if required. Recording the lessons learned and conducting a session on the same should be given equal importance and included along with the Project’s documents.

 

Some of the questions that should be raised and answered during this session may be whether the delivered product provided customer satisfaction and whether the Project schedule and budget was met.

 

The session also addresses the success of risk identification and mitigation activities and the overall factors that could have been implemented to improve the process. As a retrospective process the project manager can have an open and honest dialogue with the team members to gain knowledge about the issues faced and handled and ways to avoid the same in future projects. The Lessons learned could be documented as Areas for Improvement in the Project Closure Review document.

 

The input to the Lessons learned can be collected from both team and external parties. User satisfaction surveys if possible can give a general feedback from the perspective of the user for whom the project was delivered.

 

Since the project closure review meetings tend to focus on the negative experiences of the project such as the identification of a product gap or schedule not being met, the project manager can also ask the team members to share and submit examples of exemplary performances.

 

Specific contributions of team members who worked several late evenings could also be highlighted. The lessons learned can be used for implementing best practices in consequential emergencies or other similar situations to avoid the repetition of oversights.

 

The lessons learned exercise should serve the basic purpose of ensuring that the knowledge and experience accumulated during the project is shared and learnt from. The Project team can more effectively design and execute upcoming projects when they take advantage of the lessons learned experiences in their prior projects.

Tweet