Product Description
Capturing lessons learned should be an on-going effort throughout the life of the project. Whether we are using lessons learned to prepare for current projects or for identifying project management process improvements, we learn from project failures as well as project successes.
It is not necessary to wait until the end of the project for the learning to occur. Lessons can be identified at any point during the project. A lessons learned session should be conducted at different time frames based on the criticality and complexity of the project. Key times are at the end of the project, at the end of each phase and real-time – when you learn the lesson. If you wait until the end the project for a large project you miss some of the key lessons. Because of the time that has elapsed, project team members may forget some of the things they learned or team members assigned to the project in the early phases may no longer be part of the project during the later phases. The best time to begin discussing lessons learned is during the project kick-off meeting.
