Once a project has completed, there are many project management lessons that can be learnt from it.

This is not an opportunity to pass blame to anybody, but an opportunity to help enhance the performance and management of future projects.

During the life of the project, lessons may be learned on a continuous basis - so it makes sense to capture any learnings - as they occur! Setting up a central log - a Lessons Learned Log, is a good way to do this.

At the end of the project this information can be written up as a Lessons Learned Report. These lessons may be applied to the project as needed - or perhaps at the end of each stage.

An example of the information to be captured in Lessons Learned Log is:

• What management and quality processes went well, went badly, or were lacking
• A description of any abnormal events causing deviation from Plan
• Notes on the performance of specialist methods and tools used
• Recommendations for future enhancement or modification of the methodology used for the project
• Useful measurements on how much work effort was required to create the project deliverables. These can be used for improve future estimates.
• Notes on how effective reviews or testing was in trapping errors

These headings would also be used for the final Report.

It is useful if a ‘Project Office Group’ exists within the organization, as they would be best placed to implement these ideas.