Managing Information Technology Projects: Applying Project Management Strategies to Software, Hardware, and Integration Initiatives

Documenting and Archiving Risk History—The Eighth Step

Neither project managers nor organizations are careful enough about documenting lessons learned and archiving them so that future projects can reap the benefits. The most common excuse is that the team members from a closing project are needed to start new projects and can't be spared for lessons-learned meetings. Ironically, meetings to develop lessons-learned information usually don't take much time since the information, in the form of status reports, audits, and other project paperwork, already contains the pertinent information. Lessons-learned meetings generally take between two hours' and days' time, depending on the size and complexity of the project. If the project manager and team members have maintained a complete project file, the lessons-learned information is already available—all that is needed is compilation of the information into a lessons-learned binder. The basic lessons-learned file information includes:

• Project name and start and finish date

• Key stakeholders such as the project manager, sponsor, task leaders, and customer

• Baseline and actual budget and schedule charts

• Project issues and their resolution

• Identified risks and results of contingency plans

• Unidentified risks, their resolution, and project impact

• Analysis of team planning and performance

• Analysis of metrics collection and usage

• Analysis of what went right and what went wrong in the project

Every lessons-learned analysis should be documented and archived with easy access to all project managers and teams. Many companies have begun making these lessons-learned libraries available online to make them even more accessible and effective. But even a hard copy in the organization's resource library is far better than no access at all. Many projects have been saved the problems and costs of reinventing the wheel by having access to workable solutions for risks that continue to reoccur.