Bringing Your Project to a Successful Conclusion 239your project.Make sure you express lessons learned in general
terms in order to benefit the organization at large. Generalize
the conclusions from your project’s lessons learned in a way
that’s meaningful to the widest possible audience.
Don’t just communicate “what went well” and “what didn’t.”
Unfortunately, some lessons learned studies are little more than
a brain dump of what went welland what didn’t go well. A
lack of analysis—or synthesis—fails to provide others in the
organization with any real “lesson.” For others to benefit, they
need to know how to avoid the problems or to reduce the
impact if the problem occurs.
Include lessons learned reviews as a front-end activity in the
project life cycle.Lessons learned studies are traditionally thought
of as concluding activities only. This one-dimensional view fails to
ensure their application by future project teams. Some organiza-
tions have addressed this problem by including a step near the
beginning of their project process that obligates project teams to
review lessons learned files as part of their up-front planning. This
strategy “closes the loop” on the learning cycle and helps to
ensure that the team actually applies these lessons.
And So We’ve Reached the End
Or should we say that Brad has reached the end? When all is
said and done, Brad has done a fine job of bringing Project
Apex to a successful conclusion. Through his experiences, he
has learned a tremendous amount about project management.
He has learned that a well-documented and well-designed proj-
ect management process is essential if his organization is to
continue to benefit from the projects they pursue.
Brad has learned many valuable lessons about the benefits
of planning.
And he has learned that projects are really small invest-
ments that his organization makes, making projects sort of like
a business enterprise—something he had never fully appreciat-
ed as a technical contributor. He has come to appreciate the
role that management plays, and how important their support is
to project success.