There is a growing trend among organizations that are involved in delivering capital projects to enforce proactive knowledge management culture. To achieve this, project team members are required to formally share lessons learned for which the quality and quantity of those lessons learned will become of the project team member performance appraisal. It is said that 70% of the knowledge will be gained when it is written down.
The Lessons Learned Register is a report that provides the details of the captured, analyzed, and approved lessons learned across the complete projects’ portfolio that an organization could have. In addition, it includes visuals to group those lessons learned by project, project life stage, impact category, and impact type.
Using a Project Management Information Systems (PMIS) solution like PMWeb helps an organization to implement a formal yet very effective process for capturing, analyzing, and sharing lessons learned. The PMWeb form builder will be used to create the Lesson Learned Form which will enable all project team members to initiate the process for capturing all identified lessons learned. The form will include the fields needed to report the lesson learned, impact on cost, schedule, quality and HSE, root cause analysis, immediate solution, required corrective preventive action or solution, identification of work process, practice, or Process.
The form will also include a checklist to identify how this lesson learned will impact the project’s Personnel, Assets, Environment, and Schedule. The table will group those impacts by how they are classified as Major, Medium, Low, and Watch Out. This will enable the individuals completing the form to select the impacts that the reported lesson learned could have.
The attachment tab for the Lesson Learned Form will be used to link the relevant PMWeb records and the documents that are related to the reported lesson learned. This will provide the project team with a better understanding of the reported lesson learned.
In addition, links to records that business processes managed in PMWeb can be also linked to the lessons learned from. Further, hyperlinks to third-party websites that could have information relevant to the reported lessons learned can be also added.
It is highly recommended that all supportive documents, regardless of their type or source, get uploaded and stored on the PMWeb document management repository. PMWeb allows creating folders and subfolders to match the physical filing structure used to store hard copies of those documents.
To enforce a formal process for submitting, analyzing the approving the lessons learned to be added to the organization’s knowledge base, PMWeb workflow will be used to ensure the involvement of the right and authorized project team members. The lesson learned process can be initiated by any project team member who has access to the PMWeb platform.
The workflow will be used to formalize the creation, submission, review, and approval tasks. The assigned workflow will map the create, submit, review and approve tasks, roles or roles assigned to each task, task duration, task type, and actions available for the task.
About the Author
Bassam Samman, PMP, PSP, EVP, GPM is a Senior Project Management Consultant with 40-year service record providing project management, project controls services, and project management information systems to over 200 projects with a total value over the US $100 Billion. Those projects included Commercial, Residential, Education, and Healthcare Buildings and Infrastructure, Entertainment, Hospitality, and shopping malls, Oil and Gas Plants and Refineries, Telecommunication, and Information Technology projects. He is thoroughly experienced in complete project management including project management control systems, computerized project control software, claims analysis/prevention, risk analysis/management (contingency planning), design, supervision, training, and business development.
Bassam is a frequent speaker on topics relating to Project Management, Strategic Project Management, and Project Management Personal Skills. Over the past 40 years, he has lectured at more than 350 events and courses at different locations in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and South America. He has written more than 300 articles on project management and information systems featured in international and regional magazines and newspapers. He is a co-founder of the Project Management Institute- Arabian Gulf Chapter (PMI-AGC) and has served on its board of directors for more than 6 years. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute (PMI), a certified Planning and Scheduling Professional (PSP), and Earned Value Professional (EVP) from the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering (AACE) and Green Project Management (GPM).
Bassam holds a Masters in Engineering Administration (Construction Management) with Faculty Commendation, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA, Bachelor in Civil Engineering – Kuwait University, Kuwait and has attended many executive management programs at Harvard Business School, Boston, USA, and London Business School, London, UK.