Don’t Bury the Past; Build on It.

The importance of post-project reviews and learning from past mistakes

Often, we avoid self-assessment because we prefer not to be reminded of our failures if any. We bury the past and move ahead smugly acknowledging that brooding over the past is of little help. But by doing so, we actually fail to grasp important lessons from the past. A better approach would always be to learn all you could from the past before putting it behind you. Post-project reviews are the best tools that you can use to identify important lessons to be learnt.  These reviews help you design improved techniques to deal with problems in future and also institutionalize the best practices base on what went right in the completed projects.

In fact, project management specialists recommend post-project reviews as a must-do action item for all project managers in order to bring about continuous improvement within their organization. It is common knowledge that all projects do not achieve the same level of success. While some do extremely well, some achieve only moderate success and some others fare badly.  But irrespective of the project outcome, make it a point to always initiate a post-project review as part of the project closure procedure. You will be able to build a better future only when you learn to successfully combine insights drawn from the past with current perspectives.

EVALUATE:  If you are keen on accelerating your success rate, the simple formula is to perform post-project reviews and apply the lessons learned going forward. This is the surest way to achieve continuous improvement and become more productive both as an individual and also as a team.

While you conduct the review, ensure that you continually look for ways to improve the execution of the projects.  Also see that all the other team members take an active part in identifying areas of improvement.  While reviewing the project don’t concentrate only on what went wrong. Lay equal emphasis on what went right so that these lessons become part of best practices for future projects.

BE POSITIVE:  After completion of the review try to focus on the most pertinent issues identified and solve them within a stipulated time frame. We often notice failures easily but find it extremely difficult to come up with solutions to overcome them.

In such situations, the right approach would be to treat failures as a part of life. When we are not upset by failures, we will not deny them.  This helps us to focus more on the positive than on the negatives.  We also stop blaming ourselves for failure, and direct our energies to finding the best solution to prevent their recurrence in future.

Similarly, make note of actions that produced the best outcomes too. These will serve as effective guidelines in the future. Prepare a detailed review report by including solution to problems identified, preventive measures to avoid common pitfalls as well as best practices to the concerned team members so that everyone benefits from the lessons learned.

ACTION NEEDED:  Reviewing a project, by itself, usually results in little improvement.  You must therefore formulate action plans that help to apply the lessons learnt to new projects.

These actions should be planned in such a way that they bring about marked improvements to the new project. Assign the planned action items to different team members to different team members and make them accountable for implementing them.  Regularly follow up to check if the actions are actually resulting in desired improvements.  You can even try linking application of lessons learnt to performance evaluation of the team.  This makes it necessary for the team to prove that they have actually implemented lessons learned and brought about certain improvements in the current projects over the previous ones.  Post-project reviews are vital for achieving excellence.

Therefore, to register continuous improvement and scale new heights of success, don’t bury the past but build on it.