One More For the Road

As Robyn Roscoe and through Lyric Management, I deliver teaching and training in project management and leadership skills. I have been teaching again this year as part of the Mohawk College and CARA Research Administration Certificate program. As part of a discussion, the class considers effective approaches to conducting a post-implementation review – a project post-mortem or lessons-learned meeting. These are typically the last meetings a project team will have together before disbanding and moving on to new projects or back to their regular roles. Based on those discussions* over the past few years as well as my own experience, here are some approaches to consider in structuring your own reviews to effectively collect lessons for your next project.

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First, it’s important to distinguish the post-implementation review (PIR) from project close-out. While they can sometimes occur in the same meeting, the objectives are different and can involve different stakeholders.
 

• For the PIR, the objective is to learn lessons from the project that can be used to benefit future projects. There is evaluation of the work done on this project and considerations of how to apply those lessons to a future one. This will involve primarily the project team and not include external stakeholders.
• For project close-out, the objective is to confirm that all stakeholder requirements have been satisfied – that you did what you were supposed to do. This meeting will often involve the client, user, or funder of the project, and conclude with confirmation from those stakeholders that no further project work is required (other than perhaps administrative tasks).

 
As I often say when teaching project management, these elements of the closing phase of a project are typically skipped, as the team is either too excited to have the project done or too exhausted to have any more meetings. While both meetings offer benefits, the close-out is typically prescribed by the client or sponsor as a required element before a final payment for the project, and so the incentive to have the meeting is baked-in to the project funding. In contrast, the PIR requires initiative by the project leader and manager to organize and facilitate, so while the value is entirely to the team, the incentive is less obvious. And most people have been through bad or boring PIR meetings, so are either unclear about how to do a good one or unwilling to try.
 
This phase is also part of the closing of the project team – the adjourning phase of the project team life cycle. As part of supporting team members’ transitions to new positions and project teams, we can capture people’s perspectives on the execution of the project in order make everyone’s future project experiences better.
 
So, while the PIR meeting can have value, what can we do to make sure that it does?
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A reverse SWOT
 
In project planning, an approach to risk management is to do a SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (or challenges, if you prefer a gentler word). In a lessons-learned setting, the same framework can be applied to consider the project in hindsight. What worked and what didn’t (strengths and weaknesses), and what unplanned elements came up that made things better or easier (opportunities) or got in the way of project success (threats). Like in the planning, where we spend time on mitigation strategies for opportunities and threats, we can consider how to deal with these on future projects so they are less disruptive and/or more beneficial. At a minimum, this analysis can serve as the SWOT starting point in future project planning.
 
A softer SWOT
 
A variation on the SWOT is to organize the lesson-learned discussion around four lists, with two focusing on the past and two on the future. Let’s consider an event project – an annual symposium and dinner for our research organization. From the project just completed, there are two lists: what worked well (ex. Bill's BBQ was a big hit and did a great job catering), and what didn't work well or at all (ex. Bill's Website company was always late and didn't provide good support). When thinking about doing the same or similar project again in the future, consider feedback or ideas for changes or improvements from other stakeholders: things to do/try (ex. attendees requested that the agenda include longer breaks), and things to avoid/not bother with (ex. most attendees left their conference tote bags behind at the event, so don't bother having those next time). 
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​A meeting or two (or three)
 
It can be tempting (even possible) to try to get all of the above done in one meeting, but consider having two PIR meeting – one immediately following the last item on the schedule, to hear impressions while they are fresh, and a longer one following a rest period to capture more reflective thoughts. Immediate impressions have the benefit of capturing detailed priorities 'in the moment' but are also heavily coloured by emotion, whether letting off steam or celebratory (which is one reason to keep the PIR separate from close-out with the client). A later, structured discussion draws out more objective, big picture observations while minimizing or omitting stress points that may be seen as inflammatory or petty. This would be respectful of the nature of project teams - human beings who need some time and space to consider their experiences. 
 
It is also good to separate these reviews from any celebrations of success of the project completion. Such celebratory events can get weighed down by the sober considerations of lessons-learned. Party time should be all about the successes – gratitude and recognition of completion and of team and individual contributions.
 
Keep 'em short and simple
 
Even for a very large project, a PIR can be brief. The purpose is not to sum up the entire project but just to consider the management of the project and what you might do the same or differently on a similar project in the future. It is important to do the review in a timely and comprehensive manner, and to generate some documentation for future reference, but not to spend a disproportionate amount of time ruminating on the past. Meetings can be short, and some of the input gathered through emails or surveys, so that people can adequately adjourn from the project.

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The aim of the PIR is to capitalize on the recent project experience to learn lessons for future projects. By executing this phase of the project well, we honour the experiences of team members and project participants and respect the work of all involved by providing that opportunity to contribute to making future projects better.
 
* I’m grateful to the many students who shared their own approaches to lessons learned and PIRs during the past 5 years of Research Project Management at Mohawk College, and I acknowledge that some of what’s presented here is an amalgam of those discussions and ideas. Project management as a practice reflects the ideas and experiences of many, and ideas shared and built upon benefit everyone in the profession and in projects, in accordance with this principle:
 

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” – apocryphally attributed to George Bernard Shaw.

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Have you had positive PIR experiences? What was it about those that made them work? Please comment below or email me at [email protected] with your questions and feedback. 

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