The Fine Art of Documenting Lessons Learned

Crafting lessons learned can be tricky. Lessons learned should help future projects without criticizing anyone publicly. Here are a few guidelines for achieving those lessons learned goals. 

• Identify recurring issues. Issues that are likely to re-occur if they aren’t addressed are significant lessons learned because they will help many future projects. Conversely, issues related to one-off technology or unique business processes won’t be that helpful in the future, creating useless entries to wade through in your lessons learned library.
• Identify an avoidance or risk reduction strategy. Nothing is learned if you don’t document how to avoid the issue. Describe the issue or risk and explain what to do differently. Future readers need to understand the context, so be specific and include early warning signs for the issue. Entries with these details will help your project management peers (or yourself if the issue crops up after you’ve forgotten about it).
• Improve project methodologies and guidelines. Lessons learned might present opportunities to improve your project management methodologies or templates. Write your lessons learned entries with this in mind. If your lessons learned entry can’t be applied to your methodology, there may be gaps in your project standards. For example, if your methodology doesn’t handle working with your procurement organization on vendor contracts, write your lessons learned entry to add that process to your project management methodology and template set.
• Refrain from mentioning individuals or roles. Appropriate lessons learned talk about the issue that occurred and the approach for avoiding or reducing its impact to the project. Talk about outcomes and processes, not specific decisions or inaction. Don’t mention individual’s names. Mention roles only if absolutely necessary. 

Do you have tips for describing helpful lessons learned from your experience?

For more about lessons learned and project closure, check out my Project Management Foundations course.