Lessons Learned

Throughout my professional career I’ve worked on several projects and in many of them I was brought in to finish work started by another team.

The most common issue I’ve found is that the handover material left by the team that executed the project up to the transition is insufficient.

This happens because, when a project is contracted, everyone focuses on the final deliverable and on quickly overcoming obstacles along the way, without documenting every step taken to achieve progress.

In Project Management there’s the concept of “lessons learned”: Any knowledge gained during a project that shows how events were or should be addressed in the future to improve performance.

Lessons learned are what make great consultancy firms. Every obstacle is an opportunity to learn and should be documented.

Overcome obstacles are “lessons learned” that must be documented

In my experience, beyond being a project engineer, I’ve often been responsible for Knowledge Management—the most important intangible asset of an organization. Documentation is the key to rescuing a project and meeting client needs.

Knowledge is an intangible asset within every organization

Both PRINCE2 and PMBOK include lessons learned in their workflows. Not documenting them leads to considerable time loss when planning and closing projects.

The good news is that it’s never too late to start documenting—doing so will save time later in preventive and corrective maintenance.

What about you? Have you ever had to complete a half‑finished project? What difficulties did you face and how did you overcome them?

Thanks for reading—let’s keep the conversation going.