In part one of this blog, I explained what I learned from working through a large database of lessons learned and will now address what can be done to solve the common problems revealed
The database of 1,300 lessons learned from eight organisations, taught me two main things:
- As a profession we are pretty bad at recording lessons learned in a consistent and usable manner.
- A predominant theme in what is recorded is that people do not consistently apply basic, well-understood project management principles.
We seem to have a situation where people go on courses, learn basic good practice, gain qualifications… and then go back to doing the same old things and making the same old mistakes. As the proverb says, “You can take a horse to water…”.
So what can we do about it?
Speaking as the lead author of the Praxis Framework I think there are two practical actions. The first very simple one is to adopt a lessons log template. Give people a structure to follow when recording lessons learned. One that encourages them to properly describe the lesson; how it impacts the project or programme and what action should be taken on future projects.
To this end we have created a simple template that can be downloaded here.
Addressing the second is almost as simple. Use checklists to make sure people apply the basic, common-sense project management that they have learned on a course or on the job. I can see the heckles rise from here as soon as I use the ‘C’ word. “Checklists!!!” I hear the cry, “Bureaucracy, Box Ticking, Mindless management”. My simple retort to that is “Well if it’s good enough for pilots and surgeons, it’s good enough for project managers”.
I would recommend the book “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande to anyone. It tells the story of how the World Health Organisation used checklists to reduce surgical mortality by 47%.This six-minute video of Atul Gawande’s TED talk on you tube sums it up perfectly. I believe this approach could make a big difference in project success rates.
In the Praxis Framework, we provide checklists for many functions such as business case, risk management, benefits management and so on. They’re not complicated, just a list of things you should do in each area. You can go through and ‘agree’ with the things you’ve done and make note of the ones you have yet to do. This should prevent the kind of lessons learned that I described in part one of this article where people end up recording that they didn’t do the common sense things that should have been second nature. After you’ve used the checklists a few times, these simple acts should become second nature and perhaps you find yourself using the checklists less frequently. It’s called embedding good practice.
But it can be more sophisticated than that. You can get team members, sponsors and stakeholders to go through the same checklist on your project to get a combined view of how things are going (you may think you have adequately communicated with stakeholders but do they feel the same way?).
Because Praxis is fully integrated, the act of working through checklists to improve your personal application of project management also gives you a Capability Maturity score against the CMMI-based Praxis Capability Maturity Model.
Organisations can define projects, programmes and portfolios within the tool and combine completed checklists to maintain a real time dashboard of how Capability Maturity is developing. It’s an approach that combines practical work to embed good practice with visible real time reporting of organisational improvement against a respected standard.
And all of this is completely free. It’s just another example of how the Praxis Framework aims to not only provide easily accessible good practice but also provide the tools to make it effective and embed the principles in your organisation.
The first blog in this series is available here.
Adrian Dooley, Lead Author of the Praxis Framework
