She Writes Change

Post-Mortems or Lessons Learned are useful if run properly, of course, BUT they won't save your project. We've normalised learning lessons after delivery, after the damage, after the failure. But what if there was a better way?

Stop asking for "Lessons Learned". Start asking for "Lessons Applied". How many times have you sat in a post project meeting review, listing out all the "Lessons Learned", only see them filed away in a document that's never read again?

You've integrated all your project dashboards into one view. So why is your Steering Committee still confused? I've seen organisations invest heavily in Project software and unified dashboards, integrating every project management tool, all to create the perfect "single pane of glass" view. Then they sit in Steering meetings where executives still ask the same questions: "Are we on track?". "What does this really mean for the business?". "Should we be worried?".

So when I talk about the business risk of siloed delivery, I'm talking from real experience. And I've seen it in so many other places too. Disconnected projects undermine what could be powerful business outcomes, it puts pressure on people already overloaded with change.

It's easy to hope it "will sort itself out", but in projects, small cracks compound fast. That minor delivery hiccup gets pushed to "next week's" agenda again and again, until it becomes a board level crisis. 

Project resource wars aren't just a theoretical issue, they're a real challenge for project managers and teams.

Successful projects are more than just on-budget and on-time, real value comes from benefits realisation. You can deliver the best project in the world, but if it doesn't deliver the benefits, then it's all been for nothing. Make sure there are measurable benefits at the start of the project, review them regularly and host post-project reviews with Business Owners.