Lessons Learned

Posted by Craig Brown

Post implementation reviews, retrospectives, customer feedback... All great ways to learn about what you did and didn't do well. Reflect and learn.

Or shortcut the process and go read about other people's mistakes before you repeat them.

The Mistake Bank is a new(ish?) online community where members get to share their own failures.

Picture by Caro Wallis, CC @ Flickr

 

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4 Comments:

  1. John Caddell said...
    11:01 PM  
    Hi, Craig, thanks for linking to the Mistake Bank. The site has been around just over a year; we have by my count a hundred or so mistake stories, but can always use more. I hope your readers check out the site, sign up, and share a story of their own.

    regards, John
    John Caddell said...
    11:02 PM  
    By the way, I've discussed the idea of creating a Mistake Bank focused on Project Management with a prospect of mine. I'd be interested in your (and your readers') thoughts on whether that would be a useful addition to the PM toolkit.
    Jim Anning said...
    6:32 PM  
    Like the idea of a community-based lessons learned respository - I guess though that often in projects the most 'sticky' lessons come from people describing either 'what went well' and should be repeated along with 'what could have gone better / what we would do next time knowing what we now know'. People who wouldn't admit to 'mistakes' are often much more amenable to this approach.
    Craig Brown said...
    9:01 PM  
    Jim

    The poitive language around the "what we did well/what can we improve on" is good for teams. I'd like to think our hard headed pm community could take on the opportnity of sharing mistakes. I know I have a few I could share...

    John
    ...And probably will.

    I agree with Jim that a community lessons learned repository would be agreat tool for us all.

    I would contribute. I guess the big issue is confidentiality as talking about mistakes may often include overestimating our clients and employers ability to be rational and capable. (Not in my case, of course.)

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