Lessons learned
Lessons Learned (American, British lessons learned ), German knowledge gained , is a technical term in project management or knowledge management . The term project retrospective is also used in project management .
definition
Lessons Learned is the written record and the systematic collection, evaluation and condensation of experiences, developments, notes, errors and risks from projects . Paying attention to and avoiding them can prove useful for future projects. Lessons learned can also be part of the project completion documentation. In a structured, accessible archived form, for example in a project database , the results are used to prepare similar projects. Looking at a number of such documents across a number of projects can lead to ideas on how the project management of an organization can be structurally improved. It is therefore advantageous to make it mandatory to observe the lessons learned from previous projects at the beginning of a new project.
application
Lessons learned as well as best practices are being collected more and more frequently as part of an integrated knowledge management strategy with the aim of recording empirical knowledge and reusing it to avoid errors. Similar to the after-action review, empirical knowledge is regularly collected, for example when a project is completed, milestones or process steps are reached. The survey often takes the form of workshops, in which the participants report both positive and negative experiences. These experiences are then written down and made available for reuse in the company.
The exact content of the lessons learned is not standardized and depends on the situation of the project under consideration. The lessons learned from a service provider contain different information than that from an internal development department. The treatment of the results also depends on the content. Critical comments on the relationship level will have valuable information for follow-up projects, but will hardly find their way into a structured database with company-wide access.
Around two thirds of all companies carry out lessons learned in one form or another after the end of the project (sometimes also at the end of a project phase in large projects). The actual structured use of this data for follow-up projects is largely limited.
literature
- Elisabeth Bittner, Walter Gregorc (ed.): Adventure project management; Projects, challenges and lessons learned . Verlag Publicis Publishing 2010 Erlangen, ISBN 978-3-89578-375-3 (German) 978-3-89578-375-4 (English)
- Marc D. Sommer : The Lesson Learned Instrument . Grin-Verlag Munich 2004, ISBN 978-3-638-74816-2
- Neumann, Grillitsch, Müller-Stingl: Best Practices and Lessons Learned from Knowledge Management Initiatives 2007
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Project Management Institute (Ed.): A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge . Project Management Institute, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 2000, ISBN 978-1-930699-21-2 , pp. 49 .
- ↑ pmqs.de - Survey on the collection and use of historical project data, 2005