Learning Throughout The Project Management Cycle

There are many opportunities for integrating a learning focus into the project management cycle. At the Project Initiation Phase, learning can be facilitated through planning time for experimentation and prototyping, or by locating teams that have been in a similar terrain before and asking them to share their ‘war stories’ and ‘major leaps forward’. Learning can also arise by bringing together resources from diverse backgrounds and experiences.

As you move on to the Development Phase consider assigning someone on the project team the task of capturing the lessons learnt as they emerge, rather than trying to capture these at the end of the project when many of the key players have moved on. In addition it is important to allocate time to reviewing process issues, as well as outcomes. This is definitely an added-value role that learning and development practitioners can offer project teams and are being started by the Training and Development function of the BBC. Also as new people join the project team ensure that they have an opportunity to share their know how; new starters have a valuable role to play in helping an existing team separate out the wood from the trees.

At the Post-project Review Phase learning can come through individual and team level reflection, thereby closing the learning loop. For individuals this is the time for them to revise their Personal Development Plan and update their Yellow Pages entry, so that it reflects the experience gained on the project, as well as to log new learning needs.