Essay on "Project Management A) Lessons Learned Sessions"

Essay 3 pages (1043 words) Sources: 7

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Project Management

a) Lessons learned sessions or conducting project-post mortems are essential for the success of future projects, because of two primary reasons: on one hand, they can allow the developing team to identify what went well with a project, and thus retain these elements for future phases of development or for other projects. At the same time, these help in determining what did not go well with a project, and creating the basis to correct this in the future (Hackett, 2007).

At the same time, the project post mortems are important because they create a "calm period of reflection" (Wolf, 2010) after the project is completed, something that the team has not benefited from during the developing phases of the project. This reflexive period is essential to creating the set of lessons learned that can be used in the future.

Finally, the post-mortem is also important from a financial point-of-view (Pastore, 2003). In some large organizations, this is a full audit of the way money was spent during the developing phases. At the same time, any organization or even smaller team should use the project-post mortem to analyze how efficiently the money was spent and how this efficiency can be improved in the future. Ideally, this can be extended to the productivity of the workforce as well or to ways that the expenses can be trimmed down.

b) One of the important thing about the lessons learned is that this is a worthwhile investment (Lee, 2008). With that in mind, it is essential that the project post mortem process is not one that is done for the sake of it being done, but rather that it takes meaning, that it gathers the necessary historical facts that will influence and impact the future development of the organization and the future projects that the company will commit to.

At the same time, one should always remember and take into consideration the fact that the lessons learned process is not a "holy grail of knowledge" (Lee, 2008) -- some of the experience may be useful in future projects, while parts of this knowledge may have no immediate effect in the short and medium term. The useful thing is for this knowledge to remain in the institutional mindset for potential use.

Bibliography

1. Lee, Melvyn. 2008. Making Lessons Learned a Worthwhile Investment. PM World Today. Vol. X, Issue VII

2. Pastore, Michael. 2003. Post-Mortems Key To Successful Projects. CIO Update. On the Internet at http://www.cioupdate.com/reports/article.php/2202921/Post-Mortems-Key-to-Successful-Future-Projects.htm. Last retrieved on September 29, 2011

3. Hackett, Michael. 2007. Conducting Effective Post-Mortem Meetings. On the Internet at http://www.logigear.com/2007/310-conducting-effective-post-mortem-meetings-part-1-of-2.html. Last retrieved on September 29, 2011

4. Wolf, Leslie. 2010. The Project Post-Mortem: A Valuable Tool for Continuous Improvement. On the Internet at http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2010/11/17/the-project-post-mortem-a-valuable-tool-for-continuous-improvement/. Last retrieved on September 29, 2011

Part 2

a) Primarily, project audits are conducted because they provide an opportunity to analyze and evaluate the different phases of the project, with the particular challenges and issues that each of the phases proposed for the individuals working on the project (Stanleigh, 2010). With that in mind, the project audit gives great insight in the way the project was… READ MORE

How to Reference "Project Management A) Lessons Learned Sessions" Essay in a Bibliography

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