Companies often already hold a close-out meeting and record their lessons, and that is a good base. What is usually missing is the next step, in which someone takes each lesson to the standard it belongs to before the next project. Until that happens, the next project tends to repeat the same deviation.
Our view
- 01
A lesson is closed when a company standard has changed, such as a procedure, a contract template, a typical duration, a contingency line or a gate requirement.
- 02
Each lesson has an owner who takes it to its standard, and a date.
- 03
The process is measured with two indicators, how many lessons have changed a standard and how many deviations have recurred.
What we deliver
We put a light process in place on the tools the company already has.
- A single lessons register for the whole portfolio, with the cause, the effect on cost or schedule and the area.
- Short sessions at each phase gate, after each significant deviation and at close-out.
- A review of lessons from comparable projects at the start of each project.
- The two indicators and their follow-up by management.
- Training for the team, and the indicators and meetings the company uses to follow the process, with our support if needed.
Agents and tailored tools
If the company wishes, an agent reads the monthly reports, change logs and project close-outs across the portfolio, finds the causes that recur and proposes the lesson and the standard that should change. Whoever owns that standard decides whether the change is applied.
What it connects to
Lessons come from every process and return to them as standards. Risk management takes in the new risks, planning corrects its standard durations, CAPEX control adjusts its cost benchmarks, readiness adds requirements to its checklists and feasibility reviews its gate criteria. When a lesson changes responsibilities, the RACI matrix is updated. What one project learns passes to the other processes without starting from scratch, and so the connected PMO improves with every project.