Need help - Lessons Learnt Process #lessons-learned
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sjagannath@...
Hi All, Am looking for best practice’s in capturing/conducting Lessons learnt sessions or the process steps involved. This is for a IT services company. Please point me to any good resources or share documentation, if you may have. Any guidelines, templates & tips/tricks for capturing salient points would be really helpful. Thanks in advance. Regards Srinivas Prasad J
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--- In sikmleaders@..., sjagannath@... wrote: From pages 85-86 of Implementing a Successful KM Programme: Lessons learned: explaining what an individual or team has learned as a result of their experience, using documents, presentations, discussions, and recordings – including what they tried, what worked, what didn't work, what to do, what to avoid, problems faced, how problems were solved, what they would do differently, and key insights and nuggets. It's easier to get people to talk about successes than about failures, but there is often more to be learned from the latter. Designing a process to capture and reuse lessons learned from both can yield great benefits.
Lessons learned can be written down and stored in a repository, presented during a community meeting and recorded for later playback, and discussed in a roundtable on a conference call. A facilitator can collect individual lessons learned from multiple people and compile them in a summary document.
Avoid capturing generic platitudes such as "it's important to have a good plan" or "involve support groups early." Instead, look for nuggets such as "use one extra ounce of grease to lubricate the subassembly during routine maintenance to prevent engine failure."
Provide ways for lessons learned to be presented and discussed during community events. Don't just publish them in a document or in a database.
Once an initial collection of lessons learned has been published, ensure that it is periodically reviewed and updated. This should be part of the standard process for capturing, publishing, and maintaining lessons learned.
Consider scheduling a separate recurring conference call during which a team or individual is asked to discuss their lessons learned. Record the calls, and write down the best ideas for publication.
Also see Tips for Capturing Lessons Learned: 5 Questions to Answer with Your Team by Adele Sommers.
Regards, Stan
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Gardner, Mike <Micheal.Gardner@...>
One of the things to be wary of is the creation of lessons
learned for the sake of creating lessons learned. Lessons learned need to be
part of a process that results in some update of documentation, where this is
appropriate. If folk perform lessons learned and then nothing is done as a
result of those discussions or documents, then next time the users will simply
treat lessons learned as a step to be gone through and not as a vital part of a
process.
A good lessons learned process needs to be seen to be
providing benefit to the project and to the overall business. Internally to a
project it needs to be done at the end of a project phase and those lessons need
to be seen to be incorporated in to the project documentation (or approach) in
the next phase of the project. For larger organizations there also needs to be a
way to feed any comments back up the chain to enable the corporate processes to
be updated.
In terms of how you go about lessons learned, then it is
sometimes best to bring in an independent chairperson for a meeting who will
allow everyone to comment and has no personal involvement. The best approach is
often to get the whole of the team together and see how everyone feels. It is
often the projects that have had the most problems that can provide the best
lessons learned, so there must be a clear understanding that the session is
meant to be an open and honest discussion of the problems and how things could
be improved (in some cases it may be best to exclude the overall manager of the
project to reduce any feeling of intimidation).
Where a project has been very large, it may be useful to
get each part of the project to define their own lessons learned and then bring
the representatives together afterwards to identify the overall lessons
learned..
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pattianklam <patti@...>
Hi, You may want to take a look at Marilyn Darling's work in Emergent Learning . We used her EL Map process in my group at Nortel. It differs from many of the standard lessons learned processes in that it is situated in action. That is, the method provides a way to immediately take learnings from one event or process and apply them to an upcoming or planned similar event. I use EL maps for my own learning process. http://www.signetconsulting.com/concepts/emergent_learning.php /patti anklam http://www.pattianklam.com/
--- In sikmleaders@..., sjagannath@... wrote:
> > Hi All, > > Am looking for best practice’s in capturing/conducting Lessons learnt > sessions or the process steps involved. This is for a IT services company. > Please point me to any good resources or share documentation, if you may > have. > > Any guidelines, templates & tips/tricks for capturing salient points would > be really helpful. Thanks in advance. > > Regards > Srinivas Prasad J >
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Kaplan, Bill <bill.kaplan@...>
Patti—
Thanks for this. We call the same concept(s) “Dynamic Learning” and have incorporated the Army’s After Action reviews (AAR) with two other of what we call “Fast Learning” processes for learning before and learning after. We have also tied this to our quality concept, strategy, and practice and integrated this with our training. This ensures not only that our operating and business processes are aligned with the training necessary to execute based on current learnings and insight, but also that our internal and external delivery exceeds expectations as part of the way we work. Best Bill Kaplan CKO Acquisition Solutions, Inc. www.acquaitionsolutions.com <http://www.acquaitionsolutions.com/> 703.253.6313 ________________________________ From: sikmleaders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:sikmleaders@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of pattianklam Sent: Friday, December 07, 2007 09:23 To: sikmleaders@yahoogroups.com Subject: [sikmleaders] Re: Need help - Lessons Learnt Process Hi, You may want to take a look at Marilyn Darling's work in Emergent Learning <http://www.signetconsulting.com/concepts/emergent_learning.php> . We used her EL Map process in my group at Nortel. It differs from many of the standard lessons learned processes in that it is situated in action. That is, the method provides a way to immediately take learnings from one event or process and apply them to an upcoming or planned similar event. I use EL maps for my own learning process. http://www.signetconsulting.com/concepts/emergent_learning.php /patti anklam http://www.pattianklam.com/ --- In sikmleaders@yahoogroups.com, sjagannath@... wrote:
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