Learn, Learn, Learn

For me every job is a constant learning. Project management is no different here. Last quarter was quite hard for our project management team. We bravely (although I sometimes think “daring” would be the better word than “brave”) rescued our most important project. On the other hand we screwed up three small projects. It’s a shame not only because they were small and looked easy, but they were very similar to each other also. We have a new guy, who is still learning, but already made some good job, even though he made some mistakes too. Last three months was definitely no vacation.

During the time within different projects there appeared a lot of different issues. Wrong operating system installed. Some issues with patch cords. Poorly protected server. Wrong version of switch ordered. Acceptance tests list with some bugs sent to a customer. Poorly organized cooperation with a subcontractor. You’d have no problems with finding things to improve. Nor had we.

When we found some spare time we sat and discussed in a small group everything we did wrong and why. No witch hunting. No blaming. Just listing all things to improve. During the meeting we built a checklist for project managers working in our organization (I guess in different organization the checklist would be different). We put there all things to remember. Not only those, which PM is directly responsible for. Double checking something isn’t a problem. Not doing that sometimes hurts.

I know we didn’t do any rocket science, just looking at the past and trying to learn something from our mistakes. We were fortunate to have some time to do that, but even if we haven’t we should have done the review anyway. Learning is like sharpening the saw. You can’t afford not to do that from time to time, no matter how busy you are.

Tagged as: learning, lessons learned, project management, soft skills