Анна Мамаєва: Sharing Lessons Learned

1. Lessons Learned:
Why Don't we Learn From Them?
2016
eleks.com

2. What is a lesson learned?
A lesson learned is useful project management
information gained through experience that your
organization should retain for future use and that can
be relevant to other organizations.
Depending on the lesson, it could be a valuable
technique or an outcome that you wish to repeat or it
could be an undesirable result you wish to avoid

3. Capturing the LL. Why it doesn’t work
• “Its pain to weed through all irrelevant lessons to get
the few I need. There should be an easier way”
• “Many of the lessons just repeat the common
practices or instructions. We seem to learn some
lessons over and over again?”
• “Despite the procedure, I see no evidence that
lessons are being applied”

4. Challenges
• Lessons learned are often not captured
well. There are several different ways in
which this could be done more effectively, for
instance by capturing lessons learned through
the life of the project.
• Lessons learned need effective methods of
communication.
• Reports often focus on the negative and rarely identify
what went well.

5. Keep in mind
• Large corporate clients often rigidly mandate a way of
working which there is no option but to comply with.
• R&D projects are often very unique on their own, so the
information gathered aren’t easy applicable
• As of now we mostly capture PM experience, without
paying much attention on internal stakeholders and
team members

6. Adoption of ideas/outcomes from others may be
hindered by cultural and behavior factors.
This problem is linked to overall organizational culture,
and to whether people are encouraged to learn from
‘mistakes’ or ‘failures’ and ‘successes’
Impediment in LL adoption

7. Ways to

8. Start with your project
• Get the Timing Right
• Encourage an Open Culture
• Take the Time to Do So
• Know What Matters
• Keep a Record
• Don’t Make It Personal
• Look at the Planning

9. Communication. K.I.S.S.
• Stay on Familiar Ground. Rather than publishing
management admonitions or general industry tips, the
LL articles should focus on familiar situations. When we
put lessons learned in the context of our own daily
routine operations, people can apply them to their own
situations

10. Communication. Be bright!
• Get Attention. Try to tell the story the way you'd do it
around the water cooler, while keeping it technically
accurate. Sure, official cases/LL data base should
operate with refined information, but the best way to get
attention via other communication channels – keep
things simple

11. Communication channels
• Use different channels. Getting people together face-
to-face is the ideal way to review lessons captured. The
trick from a business point of view is to enable that
conversation. Social media such as twitter, blogs etc.
have a great potential for enabling conversation and
therefore the ability to share knowledge or lessons.
Email digest, special part of biweekly meetings, internal
twitter or blog with interesting and short notes etc.

12. What does a good LL look like?
• identify the project management element in which the
problem arose
• describe how the problem arose and define the
problem or positive development encountered, and
• provide concrete, practical solutions or
recommendations based on this experience.

13. Lessons Learnt template
Project Name
Point of Contact (POC) Author or participant / team member
Which project management areas
are involved?
(Integration, scope, time, cost, execution, quality, human resources,
communications, risk, procurement.) Chose one or multiple labels
Briefly describe the problem or
situation including any relevant
context such as stage of project.
History (if applicable)
How was the problem resolved or
the process improved?
Lesson learned: How can this
problem be avoided in the future
or how can the process be
improved / best practices applied?
Keywords, Tags
Resources (add your resources) We may attach all useful documents or templates, email etc here
Template example

14. Useful tips to be applied
• Add categories or labels (based on project areas)
Integration, scope, time, cost, execution, quality, human
resources, communications, risk, procurement
• Briefly describe the problem or situation including
any relevant context such as stage of project.
A lack of technical training prevented the customer from
performing effective monitoring of vendor

15. … And few more
• Provide user with the full text search option, as well as a
possibility to use agile filtering by category, label etc.
• Gamification: ask user to define the most useful LL. Best
contributors are to be recognized with their teams or
projects
• Include more positive lessons as best practices

16. 80% of all Retrospective found
issues could be traced back to
the Chartering stage of the
project
Ainsley Nies

17. Learning before, during and after
• Incorporate LL capturing as a common practice. Let’s
make retrospective meetings and other techniques widely
used tools.
• LL have to be used during risk management and
chartering processes.
• LL can be captured throughout the life of a project (or
other kind of team), not at the end only.

18. Before you start
• Get realistic time check. Understand, how long it will
really take to implement knowledge sharing and
retention initiatives
• Secure management support
• Top-leadership is required
• People understand knowledge management with time
• Both technology and corporate culture must be
addressed

19. Learning before, during and after
• Incorporate LL capturing as a common practice. Let’s
make retrospective meetings and other techniques widely
used tools.
• LL have to be used during risk management and
chartering processes.
• LL can be captured throughout the life of a project (or
other kind of team), not at the end only.

20. Жизненный опыт -
это когда наступаешь
на грабли...
Опа! А ты уже в
каске!

21. Inspired by Technology.
Driven by Value.
Have a question? Write to anna.mamaeva@gmail.com