Why lesson learned libraries are critical for successful project management

We are all familiar with the narrative ‘you must record lessons throughout a project lifecycle’, but the more I talk to professionals, the more I realise it’s often not done to the nth degree, and that it seems to be seen as a tick boxing exercising within the project closedown process rather than a meaningful, dynamic process that occurs throughout a project lifecycle. Is this because there is a lack of the WIFM factor (What’s in it for me?)

For lessons learned to truly be adopted by organisations and provide the value that it has the potential to deliver, organisations and project professionals alike need to decide on a way to not only identify lessons learned but to also record them in a way that the information can be easily filtered and searched in the future to support an efficient method of obtaining necessary information that can make the difference to project success and project failure.

Like risks, it’s also important to have an open mindset to lessons learned. They are not necessarily problems. Project teams can be innovative and find efficiencies that can benefit future projects and BAU activities. By recording these lessons, organisations, teams and professionals can grow together and gain a competitive edge.

The applications of lessons learned throughout the project management lifecycle are endless. They can touch every corner of a project from the mandate stage to closure activities. Lessons can relate to risk mitigations, issue resolution, procurement exercises, feasibility studies as well as supporting those with less experience in the project profession to learn from the experiences of others who may have moved on in the organisation.

Unfortunately, the capturing of lessons learned can often be a challenging space for professionals as it’s an activity done as part of the closedown process rather than throughout a project lifecycle, which creates the risk of lessons being forgotten. To answer these problems, lessons learned processes need to be integrated at all levels within project governance structures such as:

PMO’s updating guidance to include lessons learned review prompts

Lessons learned workshops at the end of key delivery stages within the project lifecycle supported with tools such as the Fish bone diagram.

Networking amongst delivery teams especially when dealing with risks and issues

Networking amongst project and programme managers

Regular reflection on project activities recorded in a project management log

Recording of lessons learned is not the only problem. Once lessons are recorded more vigorously by organisations, a lot more information becomes available centrally (which is fantastic) but does require careful management to allow lesson libraries to be easy and efficient to navigate for project professionals.

A hierarchy of categorisations that are agreed centrally will help with this. Furthermore, this information can then be linked to artificial intelligence which can then trawl through thousands of data entries in a split second and provide project teams with previous lessons learned to support recommendations for current scenarios.

Lessons learned is a huge element of the project management process as it supports continued development for both project professionals and organisations. By having a centrally agreed categorisation hierarchy, organisations can make a lesson learned system that truly supports project teams in an efficient and effective way.

How do you collate, and record lessons learned in your organisations? Can you relate to any of the issues highlighted in this blog? We are keen to hear from you, please comment below.