Question

Write a lessons-learned report for a project of your choice, using the template provided on the Companion website and the sample in Chapter 3 as guides. Role play presenting the lessons-learned report, assigning roles of the project manager, project sponsor, etc. Do you think it is important for all project managers and team members to write lessons=learned reports? Would you take the time to read them if them were available in your organization? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Yes, I think It’s very important to write lessons-learned report. No matter how well planned a project is, it will undoubtedly be the case that there are some lessons to be learned and if you do not learn from projects. Ideally a lessons learned report needs to be written at each stage of the project, especially if you are completing the project in phases, but no matter when it is done, the ideal is to use the report to do as it says; to learn lessons.

These lessons-learned reports provide valuable reflections by people who know what worked or did not work on the project. Everyone learns in different ways and has different insights into a project, so it is helpful to have more than one person provides inputs on the lessons-learned reports. These reports can be an excellent resource and can help future projects run more smoothly. To reinforce the benefits of lessons-learned reports, some companies require new project managers to read past lessons-learned reports and discuss how they will incorporate some of the ideas into their own projects.

If we do not talk about the report and take away lessons learned from the experience, then we will not be learning from practical experience and in some ways that is fundamental to project management. After all, we don’t want to keep on repeating the same mistakes; instead we should learn from them and that is why the lessons learned report is so important.