Welcome to the inaugural issue of ProjectBestPractices, a feature of ProjectNews. It is our hope that this column becomes a reference area of shared information to help us all succeed in our project work.

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Your contributions needed!
We plan to update this column quarterly and would like your contributions to best practices. If you have an item you would like to share, please submit it to Lisa_DiTullio@HarvardPilgrim.org. 

We understand that "best practices" can come in one of two ways: in one case we have done something right and recognize it, in the other case, we get our nose bloody on some aspect of project work and recognize that we don't want to do THAT again! In either case, what we learn can be of great value to us in future projects and even more value if shared across our profession. The spirit of this column is grounded in the attitude that, "We're all in this together." So, team, lets get to it!

Best Practice: Collecting "Best Practice"
Why not start off the column with an item about how we might collect this stuff in the first place!

The folks at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (HPHC) PMO have this edition's offering. They have had success collecting and sharing what they call "project lessons learned" in a few different ways.

Project Closing: Add to my toolbox
As part of a project's closing phase, we at HPHC have each project conduct a "Project Closing Workshop." Part of this agenda is an item where the project team collects information on: "What worked?" and "What did not work?" as displayed in the tables below. This agenda item usually takes under an hour yet the process can take longer for larger project teams.

A couple of points about this process:

• The process is best facilitated by someone outside the project team.
• Teams of 12 or more should be broken up into smaller groups; this will then require an additional "readout" agenda item to share lessons with the entire team.
• The "Suggestions to improve?" aspect may not be relevant for things that worked yet is it fundamental to capturing possible solutions to elements of the project that did not work.
• The process can be enhanced by listing "reminders" for categories of the project that team members should think about. Common categories are life cycle phases, i.e., design, testing, training or project management knowledge areas, i.e., scope management, risk management, etc. and even more specific areas such as meetings, decision-making and problem-solving.
• You don't have to wait until the project is ending! You can conduct this session at the end of project phases. This approach works well for longer projects where team members may be inaccessible later and lessons are still fresh in their minds.
• The resulting lessons learned are documented (at HPHC, we use a Project Closing Statement) and published to a shared document repository.

* This construct allows personal and team experience to be shared vocally among the team. Additionally, the documentation spreads the knowledge further across the organization.

Lessons across the Portfolio: the Aggregation
So – we have this document repository bursting with individual project lessons learned and the output of our project-manager-only session. True, the lessons are there for the taking (sorted and searchable) yet there is more we can do. Yeah, tear into it! Put them together, categorize them, derive common themes, develop solutions and MAKE THEM ACTIONABLE!

Typical action based on the findings:

• Augment the project management (or other) methodology
• Develop new templates
• Publish home-grown job aids
• Communicate good examples
• Communicate themes to project sponsor groups and executive leaders

However you decide to collect best practice and lessons learned, it is important that something happens as a result. If you do not make the resulting items actionable, you just held a series of gripe sessions!

Project-Manager-Only Session
After reviewing the lessons learned for the project portfolio, specific projects are selected to present their own lessons learned and best practices back to the project management community. The selections are based on the significance of the lessons to other projects. This project-manager-only session is conducted in 3-4 hours and starts with these key presentations. The peer-to-peer forum builds trust and stimulates dialogue.

Project managers then enthusiastically share lesson learned in "roundtable" discussions. Teams of 5-8 project managers per table capture lessons learned and report out to the group. The results of the session are documented and published.

At HPHC this process is facilitated by the PMO and is conducted in the first quarter of a year. This enables the group to reflect back on projects that have closed in the past year. As with the aggregated portfolio lessons learned, these items are also communicated to a senior management forum for their education and action.

Contributor(s): Robert Sullivan, PMP, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
Edited by: Lisa DiTullio, Director, PMO, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care

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