How many times have we all wished we could take a mulligan, to borrow the popular golfing term – on an action or decision we made on a project? I know I have on more than one occasion. The goal is to always learn from our mistakes so that we aren’t destined to repeat them. There are certain issues that arose on past projects that I will never forget and would do things differently in the future to ensure they didn’t happen again. But what about others? How can others benefit from issues that we encountered? That’s where the formalized concept of documenting ‘Lessons Learned’ comes in to play.
I discussed this to some degree in the methodology article Project Phase 8 – Post-Deployment. A good Project Manager should be documenting potential Lessons Learned throughout the project, but at the very least many things that are included throughout the engagement on the issues and risks lists will eventually be discussed during a more formal Lessons Learned review.