Post mortem

1. Conducting a Post–Mortem Analysis
Learning from Projects

2. Presenter -Introduction
www.singhjaiveer.blogspot.com
www.project-management-practice.blogspot.com
@ singhjaiveer
http://www.slideshare.net/Jaiveer
Jaiveer Singh, PMP
A practitioner of Analytics, Information Modelling,
Enterprise ProjectProgram Portfolio Management,
Operational Productivity & Execution Management.
He has also setup PMO groups, PM Forums and led
enterprise project management products
implementation initiatives at global scale for MNCs.
He also writes articles/ blogs on project
management, business intelligence,
social analytics and conducts workshops
on productivity & planning related
software products like MS Excel, MS
Project, Axure RP, Mind Map etc for the
management community.

3. Session Context
The creation of temporary enterprises for project-based work has
become an increasingly salient feature of the new economy.
•These organisations specialise in execution of certain type of
projects while leveraging their unique competencies, industry best
practices and learnings from their past projects.
•Often learnings from firms' past projects execution acts as most
important key differentiating factor while positioning their
organisation as preferred partner/ vendor.
Leveraging Experience as Key Differentiator

4. Post Project Analysis
What is a Project?
When Project is considered finished ?
What is involved in Analysis?

5. Apollo 11- Project
Neil Armstrong
July 20, 1969
We can learn from those who have gone before us.

6. Projects comes in all sizes & complexities

7. Projects comes in all sizes & complexities
Project 1
Project
Title/
Award
date
Standard Operating
Environment (SOEasy), Feb
2008
Scope Standardize desktop, network
and messaging components
for 60,000 public officers
across 74 government
agencies.
Industry /
Type
Information, Communication
& Technology
Timelines Mar 31, 2011- Delayed
Budget S$ 1.3 billion
Client IDA, Singapore Government
Vendor HP – EDS, Singapore
Project 2
e-government system , July
2006
It will provide information
about services being
provided by the
government to the public in
an easily accessible manner.
Information,
Communication &
Technology
Completed
USD $ 3.4 m
Maldivian government
NCS, Singapore
Project 3
Commercial Building, Apr,
2011
Construction of a
commercial facility at
Orchard Road having 12
levels above ground, one
level below ground, and a
gross floor area of 20,072
m2.
Construction, Commercial
Building
Dec 15, 2013
8.3 billion Yen
RE Properties Pte. Ltd, Real
Estate Company
SHIMIZU CORPORATION

8. Project Journey – What’s your experience
Were objectives clearly defined?
Was journey planned well?
Did you had your plans approved?
Did you met your milestones on time?
What was your resources burn rate?
What unexpected events happened?
How many issues impacted project?
Budgets Over

9. What worked What didn't

10. Retaining knowledge from Experience
Analyze Identify Document Archive

11. Accessing past learnings- Project Library
Search
Category What Worked and What Didn't Work Learning Description
Scope Mgmt WBS based techniques helped to ensure all work scope is accounted for
planning
SoW must be detailed enough covering main & supporting
work required to execute project deliverables
Resource Mgmt Required skills & compentency for team was not estimated properly which
affected work quality and delayed deliverables completion
Key resources comptencies and availability should be
checked with resource manager for entire project duration
Procurement Mgmt Decision to sub-contract one part of develolpment was taken too late
which caused delays as vendors asked for min. lead time to setup team
Review of internal competencies and available capacity
suiting project timelines must be done in early stages of
projects to get job executed from outside in time
Issues Mgmt Many assumptions were not validated with stakeholders which caused
rework later.
All positive & negative assumptions must be checked with
stakeholders and data for similar projects using
organisation project archives

12. Project Metrics – Run Rate/ Burn Rate

13. Experiential Learning
Experiential learning is the process of
making meaning from direct experience.
Experiential learning is learning through
reflection on doing.
While it is very effective way of learning, it comes with
its associated high level of costs, therefore it is very
important that we learn from others experiences and
document our own experience for benefit of others.
So there is a need of a structure process to gather
learnings from any experiences

14. Identify and Capture Project Learnings

15. Post Mortem Analysis
A postmortem is both a process and a document
(set of documents).
Setup
Collect
Data
Discuss &
Build
Consensus
Consolidate
Outcome
Recommen
dations
Analysis Summary/ Recommendations

16. Preparing for Meeting
Before Meeting
1. Send out copies of mini, functional post-mortem results for
review.
2. Ask for people to send list of top issues to discuss—should be
cross-functional issues that require the whole group in order to be
resolved.
3. Send out agenda with a list of potential topics.
(a) Prioritize topics to discuss.
(b) Discuss each topic; emphasize what to do in future.
(c) Summarize and prioritize recommendations.
4. Reserve large room, tape flipchart paper to walls.
5. Compose list of discussion topics.

17. Meeting- Preparation
The post-mortem meeting provides a chance for the team to get
together and work through the important issues to create an action
plan that will improve the development process for the team.
Meeting Length : 4 hours or less, Schedule 2-3 meeting if required with focus group
Room : Choose a room with a round or oval shaped table so people can easily see each
other and no one appears as the boss at the table’s head.
Who Should Attend: Anyone who was involved in the project should be invited. If
inviting everyone makes the group too large, consider having mini-postmortems with
people who worked on specific parts of the project.
Facilitator: Ideally it should be someone who was not involved in the project and has
no reason to be involved in the discussion.
Recorder: Taping large sheets of flipchart paper on walls or using white boards are very
effective for recording information. This way everyone involved in the discussion
automatically focuses on the recorded information (instead of on each other).

18. Analysis Guidelines
Cover all key disciplines
Scope Management
Issues Management
Risks Management
Communications ManagementProject Participants
Stakeholders
Be Inclusive

19. Analysis Guidelines
Be Self Critical
Participants should check their egos at
the door.
The post-mortem will necessarily find
“flaws” with processes and team
members who executed (or failed to
execute) aspects of the project.

20. Analysis Guidelines
Focus on issues and not on people
Be Professional
Discussions should cover a broad
range of team issues and
dynamics, from process to product
issues.
However it should not under any
circumstances become personal.
Most projects have enough
elements that need
to improve that any mention of
names or specific instances can
best be skipped

21. Analysis Guidelines
Be Factual
Documentation and data should be included in both
the discussions and in the final report. Future projects
will find it valuable to learn from project metrics and
other project management data.
The post-mortem provides a good process for
gathering that information and including it in the
report.
Be Brief
Suggestions and commentary in the final report should be brief and agreed to
by broad consensus. Although dozens or more issues will surface during the
post-mortem process, the next project will benefit more from a small number
of very specific suggestions.

22. Managing Meeting
During Meeting
1. Start with reviewing and ranking topics to be discussed.
2. Begin with the top issue and record what went wrong as well as
how to do it differently in future.
3. Stop “wrong” discussion after 5-7min. and start asking what to do
differently.
4. Check that all functional groups have contributed.
5. Save time at the end to prioritize recommendations.

23. Discussion Notes
Timeline and Resources:
This includes who was involved and amount of time each person was involved in the
project.
What Went Poorly/Should Be Done Differently?
If the list of what went wrong was collected ahead of time, go over it now and ask for any
additions. Once you have the list generated, the facilitator will need to prioritize the list so
that the most important issues are discussed first (in case you run out of time or energy).
What Went Well
The team simply needs to list what participants thought went well and record why it was
successful.
Recommendations:
Looking back at the information recorded for both the “good” and “bad” discussions
summarize what the group would recommend for future Projects.

25. Microsoft- Case Study
Microsoft is the one of highly successful global software product company.
Project Name: MS Word Version 6 - Development
Key Findings from Post Project Analysis
Teams participating in post mortem analysis meeting
1. Word 6 development
2. Word 6 program management
3. Word 6 testing

26. Microsoft- Word 6 Case Study
Word 6 development
* “Scheduling on [Word 6] was not done well and was seen later in the project as totally
unrealistic. Milestones were left before they were really complete. This meant carrying
bugs and work from the pervious milestone over to the next. By the time we realized
what shape we were in it was too late to make adjustments. [Word 6] milestones were
longer milestones than on any other project, this should have been an indicator that
there was a bigger problem.”
* “Many of the problems with proposed features do not become obvious until
development has starting working on it. By this time it is usually later in the project and
program management has very little flexibility redesigning a feature.”

27. Microsoft- Word 6 Case Study
Word 6 program management
* “The project was too large with too many primary goals. We ended up touching too
many areas of the product without consciously realizing it at the outset of the project.
There were times individuals got so caught up in their feature, that it was hard to
remember the priorities for the project as a whole (“what did I spend four days on that
feature for?”). This highlighted the fact that the decision making process was not well
defined. There was no one key person that would make the final decision when the team
could not reach consensus on a problem.”
* “There were two principal reasons we were six months late in shipping: the inability
to cut features and not know what to cut. We should have been more ruthless about
cutting features in order to meet the schedule. People knew we were slipping (it was
obvious after we missed the first Major Milestone), yet no one wanted to cut features.
Development was concerned that it would hurt morale. When in fact, morale was hurt
more by not being honest about the slipped date.”

28. Microsoft- Word 6 Case Study
Word 6 testing
* “The size and complexity of [Word 6] had changed dramatically from WinWord 2. 0. Yet
it was never acknowledged that different processes and tools were needed to manage
such a large project. It was planned and managed as a small project. Once again, care
should be taken on the front end instead of full steam ahead and hoping that it will all
work out.”
* “The schedule became everything. Individuals across all groups knew that the
schedule was a myth but all were discouraged from communicating any slips in their
work. Test knew where we were at with bugs, but this was not broadly communicated.
Development Leads did not share this information with their team members because it
was seen as de-motivating. As a result of this schedule deception, poor decisions were
made (i.e., quick fixes instead of well thought out changes, other tradeoffs were
managed very poorly) based on inaccurate schedule information

29. Group Activity
Planning
Resources
Project Mgmt/ Scheduling
Design & Specifications
Communication
Team/ Organization
Product
Management
Tools & Practices
General
Scope Mgmt Time Mgmt Quality Mgmt
Cost Mgmt
Human
Resources
Mgmt
Communicati
on Mgmt
Risks Mgmt
Procurement
Mgmt
Integration
Mgmt
Identify top 10 list of things which often didn’t went
well in your projects and top 10 things which worked
for your projects

30. Seat No Group Topic
2-9 1 Scope Mgmt
10-17 2 Time
18-25 3 Quality
26-33 4 Cost
34-41 5 Resources
42-49 6 Communication
50-58 7 Risks
59-66 8 Procurement

32. Presenting Group Findings
Each group representative present their list of top issues & tips

33. www.project-management-practice.blogspot.com