Chapter 9: Closing the Project

Lessons Learned

The purpose of identifying and documenting lessons learned is to capitalize on the knowledge and experience gained on the project to improve performance on future projects. The project organization should establish a knowledge base system that includes an easily accessible repository that encourages project managers and teams to retrieve lessons learned or by key words.

The project team should not wait until the end of the project to capture and document lessons learned; it should done on an ongoing basis throughout the planning and performing phases of the project. This can also help to improve performance during the remainder of performing the project. A system should be set to capture these learning moments and to maintain a list of lessons learned during performance of the project. With such a system, some items will not be forgotten. Otherwise, if the project was for a long duration, some key people involved in situations that might have provided good lessons learned early in the project may no longer be associated with the project when the project moves into the closing phase, and therefore might not be available to share their experience.

Information regarding lessons learned and associated recommendations internal post-project earned evaluation meetings and from feedback from the customer or sponsor should also be incorporated into the organization’s lessons learned knowledge base.

An important consideration regarding lessons learned is to ensure that they are documented, communicated, and used by project managers and teams on future projects. One way to do this might be to require it to be an agenda item at the initial kickoff meeting for a new project. Lesson learned can also be a good topic for any internal project management training that is conducted by the project organization.