Fool Me Once..........

Do you keep a lessons learned repository?
Do you reference it when the opportunity presents itself?

OR..... do you close your project hoping you never have to work with that group again?

My first shot at trying to review lessons learned for a new project went drastically different than I had envisioned before hand. The project team was pretty much uninteresting in the past and what had been done before (right or wrong). They wanted to know, "when do we start?" It was then that I realized that lessons learned documents are for the project manager. Most of the time, he/she is one of the very few that have a holistic view of the situation. He/she is probably the only one wants the project to go better than before vs "gettin er done".

Don't get me wrong, I do think that lessons learned should be reviewed with the project team in efforts to educate and stimulate thought. But it is the responsibility of the project manager to constantly refer to the repository during the duration of the project.