Project Meetings For Lessons Learned

In the previous chapter on communications, it was indicated that a good strategy is to employ about 1/3 of the project meetings to lessons learned. This is very ambiguous. What are you going to do in these meetings? Here is a useful list of things to do:

• Have team members present their milestones and results to the group. This provides a format that is friendly and routine. It is not done on an exception basis.

• New team members can present lessons learned from their past projects and work. This familiarizes the team members with what that person has done. It also helps to socialize the person into the team.

• Team members who are critical and who may be leaving the project can use the lessons learned to aid in transferring of knowledge of what they have been doing. Using the lessons learned meetings provides a useful, non-threatening approach for knowledge transfer.

• Vendor staff and consultants can present what they are doing so that knowledge transfer is again facilitated.

• Lessons learned meetings are a good place to collect experience on the use of methods and tools and tips for effective use of these.