The ROI of Lessons Learned: A Case Study (Part I of III)

While I know of many organizations that collect/capture lessons learned, there are not as many that apply lessons learned. Capturing lessons learned is only half the battle, you need to actually use those lessons learned to increase the success of the projects worked on in the organization. Let’s look at one case study of a client of Abudi Consulting Group’s that did a return on investment (ROI) of their lessons learned process.

In this first part of the case study, we’ll provide some background on the client and focus on the process put in place in order to capture lessons learned. In part II, we’ll discuss how we socialized and moved forward with the ROI study in conjunction with the client (specifically for the lessons learned component of the client project); and in part III, we’ll look at the ROI study done of the lessons learned process and the results of the study.

Company Background

Our client is a 25 year old company that specializes in technology consulting. They work on a national basis, mainly with large clients. Nearly all of their work is project-based and includes application development/customization and implementation of technology solutions at their clients.

The client has grown over the last few years and their biggest challenge is managing the increasing number of clients. Even with an increase in employees and training in how to manage projects, the client was beginning to see that the following was occurring:

• No sharing of best practices. In a survey of 100 individuals who worked on projects, responses indicated that there was no sharing of information, best practices, lessons learned among individuals.
• Inconsistent processes. A review of processes showed that each project manager had their own way of managing projects which meant that team members who moved from project to project had to learn a new way of working with another project manager.
• Similar problems were occurring on projects.  In a review of a variety of projects over the last 3 years, the same or similar problems had occurred on projects, with no sharing of information between those leading the projects. In fact, in a number of situations, the same individuals managed multiple projects had similar problems occur on the projects they were managing and information was not shared between teams.
• Projects were taking longer to complete.  On average, over the last few years, the time to complete projects has increased by approximately 10 days. This is due, mainly, due to increased complexity of projects undertaken and less training of those managing projects, along with undocumented and/or incomplete processes.
• Projects were regularly running over budget.  On average, over the last few years, the projects have gone over budget by an average of $4,250. This, also, is due to increased complexity of projects and poor estimating of tasks/activities.

This case study will focus specifically on the use of lessons learned to address:

• No sharing of best practices
• Similar problems occurring on projects
• Projects taken longer to complete
• Projects running over budget

In addition to a lessons learned process, we also worked with the client on developing a consistent project management best practice within the organization that focused on the issues above.  That information is not covered in this case study.

The Lessons Learned Process

Lessons learned, while captured in the past, were not utilized or shared. They resided on someone’s computer or were tucked away (paper copy) in a file. Much of the time, even a project manager who captured lessons learned on one project did not access that information for his/her next project! It just was not part of the culture which tended to be fast paced.

The process put in place to capture and apply lessons learned looks like this (high level overview):

• Gather lessons learned at the mid-point and at the end of each project initiative
• Stored in a Microsoft SharePoint® portal which enabled for easy searching, cross referencing and accessing by all project team members
• Filed by project type
• Included the following categories:
• Project process groups: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring/Controlling, Closing
• Included a further breakdown of categories as follows: team issues, technology issues, internal client issues, external client issues, scheduling issues, budgeting issues, general resource issues, other
• At the start of each project during the initial project kick-off meetings, a review would be made of past lessons learned based on project type. It was the responsibility of the project manager to pull past lessons learned documents and share them with the team. This information would be used to:
• Build the project task list/WBS – develop the finalized project schedule
• Develop the finalized project budget
• Assign resources
• Identify risks and develop the risk management plan
• Assign problem resolution special teams with special team leads (who would be brought in to resolve specific problems that might occur and manage them as per past lessons learned)
• A document to be filed as part of the initial project kick-off meeting was a confirmation of review of previous lessons learned along with what components of the lessons learned were used to build the documentation above (see #2)/overall project plan.
• If an issue arises in a current project that came up in a past project – there would be a reference between the two lessons learned (from the past project and the current project) on whether the team utilized the lessons learned from the past project “as is” or whether adjustments were made (improvements) to enable for an improved correction of the issue. (Within SharePoint it was easy to cross reference thereby making searching of the portal easy for all project teams.)

As part of the process, past lessons learned were gathered from a variety of sources (individual’s files, individual’s laptops/desktops) and entered into the SharePoint portal. The company hired a temp to do the data entry to get all of the information into the system.

Training was provided to all project team members on the use of the portal. The portal also housed all project templates, project documentation, project team information including sponsor, initiative being undertaken, timelines and budget, and included a schedule of future (when known and planned for) projects.

The lessons learned process was in place nine (9) months prior to the start of the ROI study so that there would be sufficient information to gather data for the study. During that time, the following occurred:

• Additional training provided to those who were having difficultly effectively utilizing the information in the portal.
• Additional search keyword and categories included to make searching even easier for the user.
• Regular monitoring to ensure that lessons learned were pulled from the portal, shared with the team during the initial project kick-off meeting and gathered at the mid-point and end of projects.

Next up – moving forward with socializing the ROI study (Part II)