So, finally the project is almost over and you are ready to shake hands with the happy stakeholders? After congratulating your project team for successful completion of the project it’s now time to move on. Or there is something that you are missing? Have you captured project management records?
Yes, it is necessary to capture project management lessons learned as they will be your future guidelines when you take up another project of similar nature.
Record it on time and not at the end
In any project, continuous learning goes on, and hence, it is necessary that there must be quick meeting reviews of everything that is going around. When there are regular interval reviews, team members get the boost and the motivation to work on. Moreover, rather than listening to simple tips for better performance, these shared lessons learned become more interesting.
It’s just not a document
The project management records are not just another document related to the project that has to be preserved. Rather it will give insights about the problems that were encountered during the project and how were those problems dealt with.
Emphasize successes
With a project management records, the project manager can also emphasize on the success during the project. Once you know what were the things that went well, you will be able to know what did not go well. You can get answer to many questions like what are the troubling areas and others that will help you managing your future projects.
Helps in evaluating every stage of the project
Once you have the project management records in your hand, you know that you have got the details of the project. You can discuss with your team members about the different aspects of the project and also put emphasis on things that were useful during the project and find out those that had created a hindrance during the project.
Make lessons learned accessible to everybody
You may share your project management records of lessons learned with your pairs in the company. A great idea is to set up a Project Management Information System which will represent a project management knowledge database.