Introduction

All through the book two recurring themes have been issues and lessons learned. In this chapter guidelines are provided for dealing with the issues that have been identified and using the lessons learned you have collected. You want an organized, consistent approach to save time, increase productivity, and produce cumulative results and benefits over time. If you attempt to resolve issues one at a time, then you can run into the following problems:

Moreover, if you use the issues database and track the issues, then you can begin to see that in similar international projects, the same issues will recur again and again. In our work we have found that the issues database seldom grows beyond 200–300 different issues. Of course, you have to analyze an issue to determine if it is a variation of an existing issue.

You have to plan ahead as a project leader for how you will surface issues and major problems to management. You really want an overall strategy for visibility to management. The graph that has been useful is shown in Fig. 10.1. This graph shows that there is great visibility at the start during the project concept. Then there is a great deal of discussion on the scope and issues. Later, there will be some visibility for the project plan. However, this is less than the project concept because it reinforces the project concept. During the project there are times when you will be taking bundles of issues to management. Near the latter part of most international projects, there will be crises and many issues. This accounts for the final large “bump” in the graph. You will want to construct your own graph and then use it to plan for going to management with issues.

Figure 10.1: Example of Visibility of Issues to Management over the Life of the Project

For lessons learned, a traditional approach is to gather experience at the end of the project. However, most of the people are gone and the memories of those remaining are dim. In addition, people don’t see the need to do this since they sense that the lessons learned are not employed—they are filed or tossed away. The basic guideline is to collect the lessons learned as you do the project work. Then the memories are fresh and the people are there.