Learning the Lessons
Question 20: Have you looked at the lessons learned from your project?
21 Ways to Excel at Project Management
Good Practice: Every project has the potential to help you run future projects more efficiently. Assess the project whether it was a great-success, total failure or anywhere between. Concentrate on the big, important lessons from the project, the ones that will have a significant impact-on your future projects.
In his article, Lessons Learned: Why Don't we Learn From Them? Derry Simmel, board member of PMI's PMO SIG, identifies two common problems preventing-us-learning valuable lessons from past projects:
- We think the lessons don't apply to us.
- We want to get things done.
The sad truth is that these lessons learned are useful. That time spent in doing the work better is time well-spent. That getting it right the first time is cheaper and easier than doing it now and fixing it later,
Derry says.
History has a strange way of repeating itself. If we don't take time to learn the lessons of the past, and-also act on them, we will continue to commit the same mistakes again-and-again. Don't think it won't happen to you, it will!
Common Mistakes
- Being too busy to evaluate projects when they have finished.
- Moving on to your next project before reviewing the last.
- Failing to learn lessons from past projects.
- Not making lessons learned available to other people in the organisation.
Warning Sign! Making the same mistakes time-and-again.