Summary

After spending many grueling months (or even years) on a project, reviewing early artifacts such as the original proposal, cost estimates, and analyses can help you identify the lessons learned on any project. The whole point is to answer the question "Based on what we know now, what would we have done differently had we known then what we know now?" You also should ask, "What did we learn from this project that we can apply to our next project to make it even better?" Taking the time to ascertain this information is useful to honing your organization's project knowledge and wisdom. Remember that the people in any organization come and go. The knowledge retained can reap benefits for future project team members. Also remember the following points:

• Decide early in a project's life cycle what metrics are useful. Fewer, concise, consistent, and clear metrics are better than loads of metrics few people have time to produce or analyze.

• Never hand responsibility for producing metrics to someone who is not motivated to perform that activity. If necessary, the project manager can produce the metrics. Don't assign the responsibility to developers unless they are interested and want to do it.

• Incorporate the production of metrics into a project's normal business routine. Producing the metrics while the project is under way yields a set of information that is of better quality than if they were produced haphazardly after the project.

• Post in public areas the more interesting metrics and graphs that reflect the team's accomplishments, where they can be easily seen and reviewed by team members and visitors.

• Never publish metrics that single out an individual's performance, whether good or bad. The purpose of metrics is to help the team recognize its accomplishments as a team and to communicate those accomplishments to others. If progress is hampered by a single individual or group of individuals, handle this discreetly.

• Be wary of using metrics from previous projects without a thorough understanding of the conditions on the project that produced them. Always adjust prior metrics to project the expectations for a new project.

• Try to create materials summarizing lessons learned on a project during the Transition phase or at least while the participants are still available and while the information is still fresh.