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Leaving a Legacy of Lessons Learned

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

- George Santayana

Project completion reviews or post-mortems are often seen as an essential best practice thatenables organizations to learn from their experiences. However, all too frequently, the insightsgained from post implementation reviews are lost to posterity.

There are a ton of books, periodicals and articles that address project management, softwareengineering and management of change disciplines and practices. But the rate of success formajor business and technology changes is still well below 50%? Why? The bottom line - we lacka common mechanism where findings can be stored, examples cited and recommendations forfuture undertakings recorded and accessed. And, we lack the structure and discipline to ensurethat our knowledge is managed and referenced consistently and rigorously.

According to Nancy Dixon in herconversation matters blog, NASA learned its lesson aboutlosing knowledge early in 1990. They experienced the sad recognition that much of theknowledge about how to build the Saturn V rocket that took the astronauts to the moon, hadretired along with the engineers who had been encouraged to take early retirement. In response,NASA created the NASA Engineering Network a knowledge network to promote learning andsharing among NASA's engineers. The Network includes the NASA Lessons Learned data base,the official, reviewed learned lessons from NASA program and projects.

Most stakeholders involved in a change arent aware of all the best practice information out thereand arent inclined to spend the time and money to find out. Theyre business people, financialtypes, actuaries, engineers, marketing folks, business analysts, IT practitioners. Theyre notproject management or management of change experts. They dont really understand the rolethey need to play and the information they need to ensure success! They just want to get the jobdone.

So, what do you do as a sponsor, stakeholder, PM, BA or other interested party to leave a legacy

of lessons learned? There are five critical steps:

1. Identify and confirm accountability for managing lessons learned

Somebody needs to own this practice, to establish the goals and objectives, to measureperformance, communicate to stakeholders and establish and drive initiatives to increaseorganizational value. Even open source software groups, which counts on thousands ofinterested volunteers to deliver and enhance functionality, have managing entities to overseeprogress. Find an owner and hold him or her accountable. More on this later.2. Build or acquire a framework

Even with lots of great experiences, insights and findings, without some kind of organizing

structure, a collection of project post-mortems will pose an unwieldy and perhaps insurmountablebarrier to leveraging collective lessons learned. Fortunately, PMI, ISO, ISACA, SEI and manyother organizations have developed frameworks and a wealth of best practice information. Ipersonally developed the Project Pre-Check Decision Framework to bring together the best ofproject management, management of change, software development and other practices andprovide a Lessons Learned framework in my consulting practice. Select a structure you and yourorganization are familiar with and build it up with real world experiences and examples to facilitateeffective use and enable real performance improvements. Or build your own framework.

3. Enforce usage

http://www.nancydixonblog.com/2010/07/leveraging-collective-knowledge-nasas-constellation-program.htmlhttp://projectprecheck.com/wp-content/uploads/Decision_Framework_Domains_%20Factors_%20Decision%20Areas.pdfhttp://www.nancydixonblog.com/2010/07/leveraging-collective-knowledge-nasas-constellation-program.htmlhttp://projectprecheck.com/wp-content/uploads/Decision_Framework_Domains_%20Factors_%20Decision%20Areas.pdf

8/3/2019 June 2011 - Leaving a Legacy of Lessons Learned

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Having a comprehensive, easy to access, easy to use facility for mining best practices addsabsolutely no value if no one uses it. So part of the Lessons Learned challenge, and a criticalresponsibility for the owner, is to ensure that everyone uses it, on every assignment, for everyproject. That use needs to involve a thorough review to identify and leverage applicable bestpractices and contributed learnings in a form and structure others can use. I can hear the groansalready! More bullshit! More red tape! Get over it! If your organization wants to improve its abilityto deliver major business and technology change successfully, a certain level of rigor andcompliance is essential. What would you rather be, a sponsor, PM, BA or architect with anincredible track record of successful project deliveries, enabled by an organizational ability toleverage lessons learned, or an incredible individual contributor with a mixed record of projectsuccesses? Your choice!

4. Manage the transformation of project experiences to organizational Lessons Learned

A key challenge is gathering the experiences and insights of each project participant and thecollective wisdom of project teams and abstracting that information into the selected framework.Dont leave it up to the BA or PM to post the project learnings to the Lessons Learned framework!The owner needs to assume that responsibility and establish the analytical mechanisms andquality and usability standards that will ensure that others, in different circumstances and on other

assignments, can quickly and effectively gain value from the information.

5. Manage Lessons Learned value contribution

There is no point in doing anything beyond individual project post-mortems if youre not willing tomanage the organizational value contribution. Getting a return from Lessons Learned meansmeasuring usage, compliance, value derived and contribution frequency and identifying gaps anddiscrepancies in content and application. The measurement results provide the fodder to developand implement continuing improvements to the practices, increasing the value delivered to theorganization.

Where should Lessons Learned be managed? The PMO is an obvious suspect. The PMOmandate is usually very compatible with a Lessons Learned program. It typically has a broad

view, encompassing enterprise or organizational initiatives, programs and projects. It should betracking and reporting on aggregate project performance and taking steps to improve thatperformance, very compatible with a Lessons Learned program.

But, implementing a Lessons Learned practice across an organization is another change that hasto be sold, prioritized, funded, initiated, staffed, managed and monitored. It is still very worthwhilebut there is another option the individual Lessons Learned practice. As a professional, you haveundoubtedly committed yourself to a program of continuous improvement. An individual LessonsLearned practice starts and ends with you. You need to follow the same five steps reviewedabove but you dont have to sell anybody else on the idea. You are the decision maker. As yougain value, and confidence, youll build a track record and reputation others will notice. Also,share your experiences with your peers. Chances are youll find an enthusiastic audience andperhaps an attentive sponsor in waiting. Good luck.