A lessons-learned process needs to be supported by a business's culture in order to provide accurate and valuable feedback.

Open Communications

In order to have a lessons-learned process work, your culture needs to be one of openness, honesty, and truth-telling. No small task for a project that is going well, let alone for one that is rich with lessons to be learned. The individuals need to be comfortably self critical and feel safe and trusted enough in the organization that they fully believe that they can tell the truth about the project.

Getting Ready for Lessons-Learned

This means several things. First, setting the stage for the process requires organizational attitudes and beliefs that support open and non-defensive communications. Teaching the organization to fearlessly tell the truth is useful for all projects.

Secondly, if the organization is not fully self-aware and truthfully open, a professional facilitator should be used. This is a simple facilitation; however, the facilitator should have project experience so they can intervene if the discussion moves to self-serving or if lessons are suggested that are inconsistent with project reality.

Third, if a ‘blame’ hunt is in process, don’t even try a lessons learned event. People trying to duck blame will obscure the reality in such creative ways that no one could sort out the truth.

Project and Business Lessons

And lastly, there are two kinds of lessons-learned reviews; both are important. First, I believe in conducting a business-results oriented lessons-learned review within a few weeks and again several months after the close of a project. This allows the perspective of project completion to be applied to earlier actions. Things that looked good at an early phase may have not worked well and things that looked inappropriate may have inspired the team to success. The focus is on business results.

The other application of lessons-learned is project execution. Your phase review or gate process should include gathering and discussing project lessons. Time spent gathering execution lessons at the end of each phase can help keep the project on track as it proceeds.

For most businesses and project teams, setting up the lessons-learned process is the tip of the iceberg; getting ready is the ice under the ocean that supports the visible tip.

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