project lessons learned presentation

Lessons Learned in Projects: Everything You Need to Know

• by Adrian Neumeyer

Lessons learned workshops aren’t fun because you always make mistakes in projects. And during a review you often think “ We could have done this better” .

But taking a critical review of your project is actually a good thing. Because if you take the feedback to heart you become a better project leader.

(Talking about mistakes: I recently created a checklist for setting up new projects . It helps you avoid making the same mistake in your next project. Go check it out)

In this article you’ll find everything you need to know about lessons learned. What they are good for and how to conduct an actual workshop.

Table of contents

• What are lessons learned?
• Why do a lessons learned workshop
• How to conduct a lessons learned workshop
• Workshop rules
• Why you should continuously ask for feedback

What are Lessons Learned in Project Management

Lessons learned are an informal conversation where you look at a project in retrospect. It is done after project completion, usually conducted as a meeting involving the project manager and key representatives from customer and contractor side.

I have also done lessons learned with the entire project team. This is even more insightful but it requires more organization ( How organized are you? ).

During the lessons learned meeting everyone shares their perspective on what they thought about the project, what they would have changed, what they learned and what could have been done better. That leads us to the next question:

Why you should have lessons learned workshops

Lessons learned workshops are performed for three reasons: The first is to learn from mistakes and to avoid these mistakes in future projects. The second is to gather best practices — that is smart ways of doing something — and to pass on this knowledge to other project leaders.

The third reason is for trust building with your stakeholders and team members. Involving people in the process and giving them the opportunity to share their perspective will make them more supportive towards project management as well as future projects.

That being said, it should be clear that lessons learned workshops are not (just) a forum for people to vent their anger.

Sometimes you might get this impression when people are being very negative. But a project review should always be about  sharing helpful and constructive feedback and ideas to become better.

How to conduct a lessons learned meeting

Let’s look at the typical process for a lessons learned workshop. The process differs depending on the number of attendees:

• When you run the workshop with your entire team, you have team members gather ideas in small groups and then present the findings at the end of the workshop.
• In a lessons learned with only a few attendants though, you will just discuss everybody’s conclusions without any presentation.

The challenge in such workshops is that people will be relatively reserved to give candid feedback. They are afraid of coming across too harsh or to hurt anybody’s feelings, or even to be disadvantaged in the future. What usually breaks the ice is when one person steps up. Then others will follow and share their criticism openly. That’s the kind of atmosphere you should encourage (even if it’s painful).

If you believe it will be hard to get the attendees to open up, consider planning some discussion points in advance. Like, putting in a few self jabs to show humility and humor. And to show others that being self-critical of both themselves and their team is accepted. Also, if you have the relationships in place to do it, consider having a few “plants” in the audience who will chime in with pre-rehearsed lessons learned or comments. This will help to get the ball rolling for the shy people.

STEP 1: WELCOME THE TEAM

Start off by welcoming the team. Then move on to explaining the purpose of a lessons learned workshop. You should have gotten enough ideas from this article.

STEP 2: EXPLAIN THE RULES

Next, explain the meeting rules. You’ll find them further below. Attendees should understand they are supposed to be  constructive , whether they liked the project or not. Everybody is asked to give their feedback on the following questions:

Lessons learned key questions:

• What was done well?
• What didn’t go that well?
• What did you learn?

You have to decide how to record the results. In a small group you would just enter the feedback in an Excel sheet. With a larger audience, you would normally use flip charts or white boards where team members record their thoughts. Irrespective of the tool you always use a 3 column structure: column 1 = what went well, column 2 = what didn’t go well and column 3 = learnings .

Something like this:

Step 3: Gather feedback

Now that everybody knows the process, they can get to work and write down whatever is on their mind. Of course, you as the project manager are not excluded from the process. You should also take the opportunity to reflect on what went well and what didn’t and document your thoughts.

STEP 4: PRESENT FINDINGS (LARGE GROUPS ONLY)

If you are doing the lessons learned with the entire project team, have one or two team representatives present the results in a summarized form.  They will briefly go through all notes and talk about the most frequently mentioned points: Many team members said they were unhappy with the way the product training was done. The 1-day training apparently was not enough, so people mentioned they didn’t feel well prepared for the project. OK, hopefully you will also get positive feedback.

STEP 5: CLOSE the MEETING

After everyone was able to share their feedback and you’re done recording it in an Excel sheet, it’s time to close the meeting. Say a few kind words and thank the attendees for their participation. You should also point at how the feedback is going to be used: ‘We will take your feedback into consideration for improving our future projects, especially when it comes to ‘.

Rules for a lessons learned meeting

• Don’t constrain people on the questions. Let them tell you what they want to tell you.
• Everybody can share their views openly. No judgement.
• There is no good or bad feedback. Any feedback is appreciated.
• Avoid personal attacks or naming names. If somebody wants to complain about a specific individual, they can use the title instead, e.g. saying ‘the head of logistics’ instead of Brian Johnson.

Going into the meeting with the right attitude

I want to help you with your mindset for a project review. Suppose you are the project leader and you are going to have your first lessons learned workshop. Then there are a couple of things you should keep in mind.

Don’t dwell on past mistakes: You may be thinking a lot about problems that have happened in your project. A conflict with a stakeholder or a critical step you forgot to take care of. Although this is understandable, it is also not very helpful. I suggest you accept whatever bad things have happened and focus instead on things you have learned (and the things that went well).

There will always be people criticizing: Even the best and most respected project managers face criticism. That’s because projects always trigger controversy and resistance from people in the organization. Therefore, it is natural for people to tell you what you should have done differently. Dogs will always be barking 🙂

Be open to learn: Accept you may not now the best approach for everything. There may be better ways to plan or to conduct certain project tasks. If you’re will to learn, you will become better. And that’s the key. Lack of willingness to introspect is a clear signal project failure is ahead. Read about Seven signs why your project might fail because of you .

Lessons Learned Examples (and what to do with the results)

The whole point of a lessons learned workshop is to learn . To become better. As a project manager and as a team but also as an organization. This learning effect only materializes when action is taken in response to the lessons learned. The type of action depends on whether it concerns only you, your team or the entire company.

Lessons learned for you (project manager):

• lack of PM support during client negotiations: If your team feels you could be more supportive in situations involving the client, you need to be more available and take over leadership in such situations.
• team praises your motivational skills: great job, keep going. Nothing to change here.
• functional expert complains about having been informed too late: True, you could have reached out to the guy 1-2 days earlier. But you were so busy with another issue so you totally forgot about that guys task.

Lessons learned on team level:

• lack of team spirit: This is a criticism that’s often raised in newly formed teams. One way to approach this problem is by organizing a team event where team members get to know each other.
• knowledge sharing: A problem when junior team members don’t get enough support from senior experts. The issue can be overcome by defining senior experts as mentors of the junior workers.
• lack of a specific expertise: Assume you are going into an IT project in the oil and gas industry, but you don’t have anybody on your team with oil and gas industry knowledge. That’s bad, and it will lead to all sorts of awkward situations which in the end the team will complain about.

Lessons learned on company level:

Some of the lessons learned may even require action on company level:

• no organizational alignment: Each department has its own set of objectives and priorities, but the leadership of the different departments often don’t seem to be aligned with one another and/or the upper leadership – leaving a messy situation at the project team level due to the conflicting priorities. This lack of alignment is something to be taken up on management or even CEO level.
• poor company culture: Project issues caused by a poor company culture, e.g. one that relies on blaming and imposing fear on employees always have to be solved at the root. Corporate management or the owner of the company have to initiate a cultural change that creates the kind of environment where people are willing to take over responsibility without fear.
• corporate travel policy: A company’s travel policy could be too restrictive, for example requiring employees to stay within a $70 per night limit for accommodation. Such restrictions can make a business trip even more challenging and unpleasant as it already is. Maybe the company should revise its travel policy?

My advice to you: Always ask for feedback

One important piece of advice I want to give you is to solicit feedback throughout the project, and not just to wait til the end. In project management, you have to respond quickly to issues, and you always want to improve your process so you get optimum results.

The way I collect feedback is to continuously talk to my team: How is this thing going? Are there any issues? Anything we should be doing differently next time? This way I instantly know what areas we have to improve upon and I can take immediate action and course-correct.

Hi! I'm Adrian, former Senior IT Project Manager and founder of Tactical Project Manager. I created the site to help you become an excellent project leader and manage intense projects with success!

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Project Management: Lessons Learned

Project management: lessons learned presentation, free google slides theme and powerpoint template.

They say that you learn from your mistakes, and we could apply this phrase to the world of project management. Indeed, Lessons Learned is about analyzing, documenting and recording what knowledge has been acquired during the life cycle of a project, in order to identify mistakes and draw conclusions for future projects. To help you organize all this, you can use this modern template, with all the necessary sections, to present the lessons learned from your last project in a very original way!

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• 35 different slides to impress your audience
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What is a lessons learned template? Guide with examples

Every project hits a few (or many) bumps along the way, but they are opportunities to learn and improve the next go around. Many teams use a “lessons learned” template.

This article spells out the benefits of using a lessons learned template, provides some example templates to get started, and shares monday.com’s interactive lessons learned template built for all kinds of professionals.

Get the template

What is a lessons learned template?

During post-project review meetings, teams usually discuss the various lessons they learned throughout the project. A lessons learned document or template is often the document that captures all of this feedback.

A lessons learned template is a document or presentation that helps team members review positive and negative experiences of a completed project and identify any key learnings.

This opens up opportunities for improvement on future projects. The high-level buckets include:

• Everyday management
• Communication
• Technical elements of the project
• Overall project management

This type of organization means a comprehensive summary of how people worked together, reacted to setbacks, and executed tasks.

When should you use a lessons learned template?

Naturally, use of a lessons learned template is during the fourth stage of the project life cycle, project closeout. Project closeout is the time period in which the team reviews the deliverables, as well as compares and tests their quality to the intended project outcome.

They also deliver the project and documents to the client or stakeholder. At this point you have both the time and data needed to be able to reflect and parse out important reflections and learnings.

To learn more about this phase of the project life cycle, read our blog on project closure.

3 reasons to use a lessons learned template

While we could probably list 100+ reasons, the top 3 are:

1. Avoid repeating mistakes

There’s nothing more frustrating than making the same mistakes over and over again. Unless a project manager makes a conscious effort, your team may lose out on ‌valuable insight by not learning from their experiences.

A lessons learned template is an excellent tool to get the knowledge gained down on paper (virtual paper works too). Make good use of what you’ve learned and avoid the same mistakes. It also encourages knowledge sharing within your team so everyone can learn from each other.

2. Identify strengths and weaknesses

If there are aspects of your projects that always seem to take more effort than others, a lessons learned template can help. These templates often contain a section for challenges the project team experienced during the project.

It’s hard to to address a problem if you are not aware of what the challenge is! Collecting feedback from the team makes it easier to dentify common threads and pinpoint … which links in the chain are causing the setbacks.

Similarly, if there are team members or departments that always do a stellar job or get things done ahead of schedule, learn why.

A lessons learned template can identify what they are doing that the rest of the team is not. It then becomes easier to spread productive habits around the entire team.

3. Make team members feel heard

74% of employees report that they’re more effective at their job when they feel heard.

Collaborating on a lessons learned document is an excellent opportunity for your team to vocalize what they struggle with and what makes life easier. Giving your team the space to voice their opinions will make them feel heard and appreciated. This kind of company culture is more likely to boost employee morale and productivity.

Get template

What’s an example of how to use a lessons learned template? 

Here is a real-life, practical example of when you could use a project lessons learned template.

You are supplying a large corporation with office furniture, including installation. You’ve planned out every detail, including stock, logistics, labor, timelines, etc.

During installation, some things go poorly — the office chairs you ordered from the supplier came in the wrong size, a delay. Once installation begins, your team works at a slower pace than anticipated.

Everything else goes according to plan, and despite the hiccups, you complete the installation a couple of weeks behind schedule. So, how do you put a lessons learned template help into action? Let’s break it down into four steps.

Step 1. Share it with the right people

First, assemble representatives from all involved parties — the labor team, management team, and stakeholders. Then, provide a copy of the following lessons learned template and ask them to fill it in honestly .

( Image Source )

Step 2. Solicit feedback

From the labor team: You glean nobody was there to inspect the delivery of office chairs when they arrived. There was only a security guard on duty who signed off. You also learned the onsite manager arrived at least half an hour late daily.

From the drivers: You learn the vehicles were in good shape and had plenty of space to transport your goods and equipment.

From the managers: You learned the communication chain between your headquarters and the installation site was flawed.

This feedback gives you several key insights.

Step 3. Turn feedback into insights

First, your onsite manager was negligent in their time management and communication. Second, there is no qualified staff to oversee and inspect deliveries.

Third, the logistics company provides good quality vehicles (you can trust them for future projects).

monday.com makes it easy to request, record, and analyze feedback and turn this feedback into actionable improvements for future projects. So next time you’re faced with a similar project, you can access this feedback from anywhere and use it to guide your actions.

Step 4: Analyzing the lessons

Going back to the example: when considering how to do things better the next time, it’s essential to check in with the onsite manager to ensure they arrive on schedule and relay communications accurately.

So you appoint a staff member to oversee deliveries and keep the details of the logistics company for future use. You have eliminated weak links and fortified strong ones by analyzing the lessons learned.

monday.com’s lessons learned template

monday.com Work OS is a no-code/low-code platform that allows businesses of all sizes to work without limits using a variety of pre-built templates, automations, real-time insights, and other features.

We’ve created a comprehensive, highly-customizable, and interactive lessons learned template to make managing the lessons learned process quick and intuitive.

Some of the critical ways monday.com can help:

Accessible from anywhere

When asking yourself, “What could have been done better?” simply access your monday.com project lessons learned template from anywhere. Then, watch in real-time as all insights are consolidated and available for analysis and presentation.

Our template provides space for reflection, documentation, consolidation, and storage of ideas that you can retrieve later. With the wisdom of past projects readily accessible, your business is in a better position to learn and grow.

Easily collect feedback with forms

With monday.com, we don’t just give you a template ( though we have many of those available ). Using our Work OS, you can create a custom-made, shareable form to quickly solicit feedback from your team. Simply send the link to your form, and voila! Each response will populate directly onto the respective board for you to analyze.

Harness the power of automation

monday.com’s lessons learned template saves time and resources by automating processes that used to waste valuable hours — no more sifting through endless stacks of forms and trying to piece them together yourself.

You can sit back and watch as it categorizes, assigns, or organizes information in a presentable format from the word go. Beyond those we’ve already mentioned, there are many (many) templates to help manage workflow and complete successful projects.

Related monday.com templates

Project schedule template.

The Project Schedule Template maps out the project timeline by phase. It has space to include all the necessary details like schedule, budget, resources, risks, and task status.

Action plan template

The Action Plan Template breaks down a project into actions and their subsequent details. For each step, you can assign a person responsible, a priority level, a start and end date, and any other relevant notes.

Employee review template

The Employee Review Template makes it easy when you need a standardized way to assess employee performance. It includes sections for characteristics such as initiative, group work, client relations, technical skills, attendance, and consistency.

Self-assessment template

Similar to the employee review template, the Self-Assessment Template asks employees to indicate how they view their performance. Based on this reflection, they can identify areas to improve.

Frequently asked questions

How do you create a lessons learned document.

To create a thorough lessons learned document, you need a lessons learned template. monday.com draws on years of collective workplace solutions experience to create a powerful lessons learned template. We make it simple to assess task success by guiding you through the pros, cons, and suggestions for every aspect of a completed project.

What do you write in lessons learned?

All lessons learned documents should cover the following:

• What went wrong during the project?
• What went well?
• What could have been done better?
• What valuable lessons can be taken away?

How do you introduce lessons learned?

Any insight gleaned from a lessons learned template should be documented and stored. We recommend appointing a project manager to present the lessons learned during the planning phase of your next project.

How do you share lessons learned?

Any lessons learned should be communicated with the whole company in a respectful and team-oriented way. Remember, our lessons learned template is designed to advance the interests of everyone in the business, from admin staff and technicians to senior management. Plus, it’s easy to grant and control access so you can view the lessons learned and add commentary in real-time.

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How to capture lessons learned in project management

By accurately documenting the lessons learned during your project lifecycle, you can learn from your mistakes and share those findings with other project managers. This article walks you through the five steps of lessons learned: Identify, Document, Analyze, Store, and Retrieve. Learn how to conduct a lessons learned survey and brainstorming session, as well as how to share that information with other project managers. 

Project deliverables aren’t the only valuable things you can take away from a project. Whether your initiative is a resounding success, an unfortunate failure, or somewhere in between, there are always lessons to be learned from any project. 

Effectively capturing and documenting the lessons learned, however, can be tricky. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to conduct and capture lessons learned in project management. Here’s how. 

What are lessons learned in project management? 

You learn something new on every project, but a lessons learned session ensures you capture and codify that information to share it with other teams. When you conduct lessons learned and create a lessons learned report, you’re producing a document the entire project team can use to improve future projects. 

You can capture lessons learned at any point during the project timeline . In fact, depending on the complexity of the project, you may want to conduct a lessons learned session at the end of each project management phase , in order to capture information when it’s still fresh. That way, you can evaluate what went well, what went wrong, and what you can learn from it. 

Different types of lessons learned sessions

You may have conducted a lessons learned by a different name. Engineering teams often do a version of lessons learned called the 5 Whys , which specifically aims to identify the root cause of project failure. Scrum teams run retrospectives at the end of a sprint session. Some project teams also do postmortems at the end of projects. 

The important thing is to capture the information and share it with everyone. No matter what you call it, aim to conduct at least one lessons learned session per project.

5 steps to conduct a lessons learned

If you’re just getting started with lessons learned, use these five steps to ensure you’re accurately capturing, documenting, and sharing the project’s information in a way that everyone can access. 

1. Identify

This is where you identify lessons learned from the project to document in step two. The Identify phase is made up of three steps: 

Step 1: Send lessons learned survey

Immediately after the project is completed—or at the end of a significant project phase for larger initiatives—send a lessons learned survey to every project team member. This way, you’re capturing feedback while it’s still fresh in everyone’s mind. Then, aggregate that information to get a general picture of what everyone learned from the project. 

The lessons learned survey is one of the most important parts of the lessons learned process. Below, we have a template you can use. This survey is typically general to any project, though you can adapt the questions to suit your project’s needs. 

Step 2: Schedule the lessons learned session

Before the lessons learned session, select a session facilitator. Ideally, find a facilitator who isn’t the project manager, so team members feel comfortable speaking freely. Ask the team lead or an adjacent team member to run the session. 

After scheduling the lessons learned session, the facilitator shares any pre-reading information to make sure project team members are on this same page. This could include re-sharing project planning documentation like the project plan or project objectives . Depending on the complexity of the project, you could also share a timeline of the project and accomplishments. 

Step 3: Conduct the lessons learned

In addition to the lessons learned survey, host a live brainstorming session for all team members. This is a chance for team members to expand upon their lessons learned. In particular, there are three main questions to ask during the lessons learned brainstorming session: 

What went right? 

What went wrong? 

What could be improved? 

2. Document

The main point of running a lessons learned session is to share these lessons with the entire team. Plan to create a detailed lessons learned report with all of the project information and discussion notes, as well as an executive summary of the lessons learned for relevant project stakeholders to review. 

Format of a lessons learned report

Executive summary

Summary of findings

Lessons learned survey(s)

Recommendations in detail

Analyze and apply the lessons learned so other teams and future projects can benefit from it. This is especially relevant if you’re conducting a lessons learned session mid-project. Analyze the information from the lessons learned survey in order to effectively improve your project for the upcoming phases. Alternatively, if you’re running a lessons learned at the end of a project, use the Analyze phase to glean insights and opportunities before beginning your next project. 

Store the lessons learned in a central repository that everyone can access, like a project management tool. With a central source of truth, as project leads can access shared information to best prepare for their projects. 

5. Retrieve 

If you’re running a similar project, search for a lessons learned report from a past project to avoid making the same mistakes from a previous project. These reports should be shared in a central source of truth that all project managers can review before beginning the project planning process. 

Use a lessons learned survey template

During the first phase of a lessons learned session, send out a lessons learned survey to capture information from the project team. Though you will also discuss the project in person, the lessons learned survey is a critical part of ensuring you capture accurate information in order to learn from your projects. 

Here’s an example of a generic lessons learned survey template you can use for any project.

Please indicate your level of agreement or disagreement with each of the following statements: 

If you select Disagree or Strongly Disagree, please provide additional information to help improve our future project planning process. 

Project planning

The project plan included the correct level of detail. I had everything I needed to understand what the project was about. 

Strongly agree

Strongly disagree 

Not applicable

The project plan clearly explained the purpose of the project. 

The project’s scope was well defined. 

The project schedule was clear and easy to follow. 

The project communication plan clearly defined how and where I should communicate about project work. 

The project plan was shared with all stakeholders and easy to find. 

As a stakeholder, I’m happy with my level of involvement in the project planning process. 

Project execution

I understood everyone’s responsibilities during the project lifecycle.

Project stakeholders were engaged and effectively involved in the project work.

The project environment was collaborative. 

The project manager was available and responsive. 

Project changes were manageable and fit within the project scope.

The initial project schedule, documented in the project plan, closely matched the actual project schedule. 

The project outcome matched what was defined in the original project charter. 

The project team had a shared understanding of their goals and individual responsibilities. 

The project was realistic and achievable. 

Assignments were clearly defined throughout the project lifecycle. 

The project had strong performance metrics to help define success. 

I believe we hit the project goal. 

My involvement in the project—including workload, time, and effort—met my expectations. 

Lesson learned

Capturing lessons learned can help you identify and pass on institutional knowledge. Instead of reinventing the wheel, team members and project leaders have clear insight into what worked, what didn’t, and what can be improved. 

By connecting past lessons learned to future team’s work, you can start your project on the right foot. When everyone knows exactly who’s doing what by when, what happened—and why—your team is more empowered to get their high-impact work done. 

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Everything you need to know about waterfall project management

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10 Best Lessons Learned Templates & Examples in Excel & ClickUp

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

April 2, 2024

Documenting lessons learned is a critical part of project management, allowing teams to reflect on what worked and what didn’t, and to identify opportunities for improvement.

Using a lessons-learned template can make the process of capturing and analyzing project insights more manageable and structured, providing a valuable resource and executing future projects.

In this article, we’ve looked at 10 different lessons learned templates, including both general templates and those specific to certain project management tool s like ClickUp . These templates offer a range of features and benefits, enabling you to choose one that best suits your project management needs.

What is a Lessons Learned Template?

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A lessons-learned template is a powerful tool for project managers to document and analyze the successes and failures of a project. By capturing insights from team members, and identifying what went well, what went wrong, and what could have been done better, project managers can implement changes that increase the chances of success in future projects.

A good lessons-learned template should be easy to use, provide clear instructions, and be adaptable to a variety of projects. It should capture all the relevant information, including project objectives, milestones , successes, and failures, and include a summary of the lessons learned. The template should be able to capture both quantitative and qualitative data and provide actionable recommendations for road-mapping future projects.

Documenting lessons learned is an essential part of project management. It provides an opportunity for project teams to reflect on their work and identify opportunities for improvement. Some of the key benefits of using a lessons-learned template include:

• Capture valuable insights : A lessons-learned template helps you capture valuable insights from team members about what did and didn’t work. These insights can identify areas for improvement—especially when prioritizing future projects.
• Identify opportunities for improvement : By documenting lessons learned, you identify opportunities for improvement and implement changes that increase the chances of success.
• Promote collaboration : A lessons-learned template encourages team collaboration by sharing insights and creating a forum for discussion around the highs and lows of the process and what you can improve in things like project deliverables.
• Improve project management processes : Capturing lessons learned from each project continually enhances processes, so you streamline workflows , reduce costs, and get better outcomes.
• Ensure continual learning : A lessons-learned template lets your team continually learn and grow, which helps you stay competitive in your industry and adapt to changing market conditions.

10 Lessons-Learned Templates to Plan for Future Project Success

We’ll look closer at the benefits of using a lessons-learned template and explore 10 of the best templates you can use for your project management needs. These templates range from basic Microsoft Word templates to more advanced project management tools like ClickUp.

ClickUp is a project management tool that offers a range of templates for different project management tasks, including lessons learned templates.

The ClickUp Lessons Learned Template is a project management template that can help you organize your insights from working on projects. This template provides a structure to document the successes and failures of a project, as well as lessons learned. With this template, you can capture project objectives, milestones, successes, and failures, and include a summary of the lessons learned.

This template is designed to be easy to use and customizable to fit the needs of any project. It is ideal for project managers who want to ensure they can learn from their experiences and avoid making the same mistakes in future projects.

ClickUp Project Management Lessons Learned Template: Review in Board view

This is the same ClickUp template as the first, but there’s an additional Board view you can use that is specifically designed to review what you’ve—well…learned. Convenient, right?

This template provides a structure to document the successes and failures of a project and includes a summary of the lessons learned. With this template, you can capture project objectives , milestones, successes, and failures, and include a summary of the lessons learned.

ClickUp Project Manager Lessons Learned Template: Needs action view

Again, the same lessons-learned template can be used but this specific version has a custom view to remove or highlight what needs action to continue. Depending on the type of project you’re reviewing, you may want to remove any action items and have the List view work more as a log than a to-do.

This template was designed to be easy to use and customizable to fit the needs of any project. It is ideal for project managers who want to ensure they can learn from their experiences and avoid making the same mistakes in future projects.

ClickUp Project Management Lessons Learned Template: Feedback Form view

The ClickUp Lessons Learned Feedback Form Template is similar to the first template, but instead of a Doc or List view format, it is designed as a ClickUp Form for project stakeholders to provide feedback on the project.

Your collected feedback is then used to start the Lessons Learned process, which is crucial for future project success. The benefits of using this template include gathering valuable feedback and insights, identifying areas for improvement, and ensuring that the Lessons Learned process is initiated.

The ClickUp Project Review Template is a comprehensive report that examines how a project was carried out.

It considers the lessons learned, the best practices used, how it fared during an audit, and whether it had adequate program managemen t and controls. The benefits of using this template include gathering valuable feedback and insights, identifying areas for improvement, and ensuring that future projects are better managed.

A project manager can create a report at the end of the project to evaluate how the project was carried out and identify areas for improvement. The report can then be used to make changes to future project processes and ensure that mistakes are not repeated.

The ClickUp Project Retrospective Template is a procedure for evaluating whether a project was a success or a failure and determining what can be done in the future to prevent failures.

The benefits of using this template include identifying what went well, what could be improved, and ensuring that future projects are better managed. A project manager can create a retrospective report at the end of the project to evaluate how the project was carried out and identify areas for improvement.

The report can then be used to make changes to future project processes and ensure that mistakes are not repeated. Anyone who is managing a project should use this template. By doing so, they will be able to gather valuable insights that can be used to improve future projects.

Bonus: Retrospective Tools !

The 4Ls Retro template is an excellent way to spice up your project team’s retrospective sessions. This creative Doc template allows your team members to go in-depth with their project takeaways.

Specifically, the ClickUp 4Ls Retro Template is based on the four Ls: Liked, Learned, Lacked, and Longed For. By categorizing feedback according to these four elements, your team members can communicate their thoughts and feelings about a project more easily.

This template is ideal for project managers, team leads, and anyone involved in project management who wants to improve real-time team collaboration and gather actionable feedback from their team.

The ClickUp Project Management Review Template is a useful document for determining whether a project is worth continuing or not.

It provides insights into whether the project is producing the expected results for the organization and gives your business an excellent chance to get feedback on the course and success of a project. The review document examines how a project was carried out, considers the lessons learned, best practices used, and whether it had adequate program management and controls.

This template is ideal for project managers, team leads, and anyone involved in project management who wants to gather insights and feedback on a completed project.

Planning ahead is crucial for enhancing your organizational abilities and maintaining concentration on your objectives. However, the significance of reflecting on past performance should not be overlooked—it provides insights into your growth and serves as a solid base for devising future strategies. The ClickUp Year in Review Template enables you to contemplate your advancements, scrutinize your efficiency, and utilize this knowledge as motivation for establishing fresh goals and pursuing them with relentless determination. 🚗

A monthly status report serves as a crucial document, designed to keep supervisors updated on the plans and actions of team members involved in a specific project. This document proves beneficial as a resource for annual performance assessments.

Being aware of your business’s advancements is pivotal for its success. In order to maintain alignment with your goals, you need a method to promptly and precisely gauge your progress. This is where a practical tool like the ClickUp Monthly Business Status Report Template becomes invaluable!

With this template, you and your team can:

• Effortlessly track and illustrate performance indicators
• Stay orderly and current with the progression of all projects
• Preempt potential issues with swift identification

ClickUp’s Project Tracker Template is an invaluable tool for capturing and leveraging lessons learned during the course of a project.

It serves as a platform for documenting important takeaways and insights gained throughout the project. These could be about successful strategies, areas of improvement, or processes that need refining for future undertakings.

The template also facilitates tracking of project progress, which helps in pinpointing mistakes or successes that can inform future actions!

The Stakeholdermap Excel Lessons Learned Template is an ideal option for project managers who want a more structured approach to documenting their lessons learned.

This template offers a table format for easy data entry and analysis, allowing you to capture essential project details and lessons learned from team members. You can use the Excel Lessons Learned Template to track project objectives, risks, issues, assumptions, and decisions.

The lessons learned template is suitable for project managers, team members, and other stakeholders who want to capture lessons learned from a project in a structured and consistent format.

The Project Management Institute Lessons Learned Template is another option for project managers who prefer a more thorough approach to documenting their lessons learned.

If you need a way to learn from your software development project experiences, PMI’s spreadsheet template helps collect and share both positive and negative outcomes from a recent project. This template can help improve your current and future projects with outlines for brainstorming sessions with your team.

In the end, the template works well for those wanting to discuss the information after a significant milestone to capture more insights to reach a more successful outcome in your next project.

In project management, the process of capturing lessons learned is crucial for continuous improvement and future project success. The process typically involves five key steps: identification, documentation, analysis, storage, and retrieval.

Here’s an example of a lessons learned process for a newly launched software application that faced significant delays due to unforeseen technical issues:

• Identification: The project team holds a lessons learned session towards the end of the project, focusing on identifying the successes and failures of the project. They identify that unclear communication between the development and testing teams led to repeated errors and these communication issues were a major contributor to the delay.
• Documentation: The team then documents these insights in a lessons learned document, detailing the communication problems, their impact on the project, and how they could be avoided in the future.
• Analysis: The team further analyzes the issue, realizing that the lack of a centralized platform for communication was a critical factor. They conclude that using a dedicated project communication tool could have mitigated this problem.
• Storage: These analyzed lessons are then stored for future reference. The project manager ensures that these insights are accessible to all relevant stakeholders, with the aim of avoiding similar mistakes in future projects.
• Retrieval: When planning for the next project, the project manager retrieves these lessons. They implement a dedicated communication tool right from the start to ensure clear and effective communication between all teams involved, thus applying the lessons learned from the previous project.

Whether you’re looking for a simple Word template or a more complex tool with advanced features, there’s a lessons-learned template out there that can help you capture, analyze, and apply the insights you gain from each project.

If you’re interested in trying out a lessons-learned template, we recommend starting with the ClickUp Lessons Learned Template. You can download it from the ClickUp Template Center , along with other project management templates that can help you streamline your project documentation , timelines , retrospectives, and more.

Whether you choose a general template or one specific to your project management tool, be sure to actively involve your team and stakeholders in the process, use a variety of data sources, be open to feedback, share your lessons learned, and continuously improve your processes and workflows.

Remember, the goal of a lessons-learned process is not just to document what went wrong, but to learn from past experiences and optimize your project performance for future success.

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Lessons learned guidelines and examples. And how to automate them for project management

A lesson learned is a record of what was done, why it was done that way, and what went wrong. It is a summary of the project's successes and failures, and it helps future projects to avoid repeating mistakes.

In this blog we will explore:

• An introduction to Lessons Learned

Examples of lessons learned in project management

Why lessons learned is an important part of project management.

• Stage 1: Identify recommendation for future projects
• Stage 2: Document and share findings
• Stage 3: Analyze and organize results
• Stage 4: Store the results for easy access
• Stage 5: Retrieve for use in current projects

An introduction to lessons learned

Often not explicitly captured, lessons learned are an important way of not repeating mistakes and shoring up “how to do it” knowledge, lending advantages and experience to the next time you undertake a similar task. Continuous improvement is an important aspect of running an efficient PMO, team, department, or business. Small but regular incremental changes add up over time and lead to greater efficiency, productivity, and in turn, revenue and Return on Investment. This is known as ‘Kaizen’, a Japanese school of thought meaning ‘change for the better’ which sees improvement as gradual and methodical. 

Inefficiencies in any form, whether it is delays, shortcomings, quality control, poor communication, can impact your business in any number of ways from easily quantifiable things such as productivity and revenue, to things which are harder to measure, such as reputation within the marketplace. Lessons learned are an excellent way to learn from experience, just like we do in life. If you have made a mistake or could have done something slightly better, we tend to learn from this to make it easier for ourselves next time. Lessons Learned in Project Management can be leveraged in the same way and play an important part in both PRINCE2 and PMP PM methodologies. Sharing these lessons learned with other project stakeholders and other managers will help your next projects to be even better, even if you are not directly part of them. That sounds great, but where to start? In this blog, we will explore the five stages of lessons learned:

• Identify recommendation for future projects
• Document and share findings
• Analyze and organize results
• Store the results for easy access
• Retrieve for use in current projects

Scope management lessons learned:

• Defining Clear Objectives : A project that suffered from scope creep shows the importance of having a clear, detailed project scope agreed upon by all stakeholders from the outset.
• Change Control : Implementing a rigorous change control process is essential. Without it, unapproved changes can lead to project delays and budget overruns.

Time management lessons learned:

• Realistic Scheduling : Underestimating the time needed for key tasks led to missed deadlines. Future projects will benefit from more realistic time allocations and contingency planning.
• Critical Path Awareness : Not keeping a close eye on the project's critical path resulted in overlooking dependencies that later caused bottlenecks.

Cost management lessons learned:

• Accurate Cost Estimation : An initial budget that did not account for all potential costs led to a funding shortfall. Subsequent projects should include a more thorough estimation and a contingency fund.
• Regular Budget Reviews : Failing to regularly review the budget against actual expenses caused overspending. Continuous monitoring is crucial for keeping a project on track financially.

Quality management lessons learned:

• Quality Assurance Processes : Skimping on quality assurance in favor of speed resulted in rework. Incorporating regular quality checks throughout the project lifecycle is vital.
• User Acceptance Testing (UAT) : A project delivered without extensive UAT faced user dissatisfaction. Involving end-users early and frequently in the testing process ensures the product meets their needs.

Risk management lessons learned:

• Risk Identification : Risks that were not identified at the project's start materialized and caused issues. A more comprehensive risk assessment is needed during the planning phase.
• Proactive Risk Mitigation : A lack of proactive risk mitigation strategies led to reactive firefighting. Developing and following a risk mitigation plan can prevent many problems.

Stakeholder management lessons learned:

• Regular Stakeholder Engagement : Insufficient stakeholder engagement resulted in a lack of buy-in. Keeping stakeholders informed and involved is necessary for project success.
• Clear Communication Channels : Miscommunication with stakeholders led to misaligned expectations. Establishing clear, open communication channels is essential.

Resource management lessons learned:

• Team Skill Assessment : Assigning tasks without properly assessing team skills led to underperformance. Matching task requirements with team members' skills is important for efficient task execution.
• Resource Allocation : Overallocation of resources resulted in burnout and turnover. Effective resource management and allocation prevent team exhaustion.

Communication lessons learned:

• Effective Communication Plans : Without an effective communication plan, team members and stakeholders were often out of the loop. A structured communication plan is crucial for keeping everyone informed.
• Documentation : Poor documentation practices made it difficult to track decisions and changes. Keeping detailed records helps maintain continuity and clarity throughout the project.

Project managers can learn from past projects by analyzing where they succeeded and where they failed. This information can be used to improve future workflows, processes, and products.

Here are five stages of lessons learned:

Guideline Stage 1: Identify recommendation for future projects

This stage is a detailed examination of what happened during the project, why it happened and what could be done differently in the future to avoid similar problems.

Firstly, you need to prepare the lessons learned session. This is usually led by the designated project manager and can be done by completing a project survey. This also helps participants be prepared for the lessons learned session and provide any feedback. The survey should be made up of different categories to make sure that essential information is included. Examples of categories could be project management, resources, technical, quality, scope, communication, testing, implementation, etc. Also consider adding key questions as part of the survey such as:

• What went right?
• What went wrong?
• What can be improved?

Don't wait until the end of a project before starting this phase! If you wait too long, people will forget why things happened or what caused them to happen—and then your report will be incomplete and unreliable.

Guideline Stage 2: Document and share findings

Once lessons learned are captured, they need to be reported to the project stakeholders. This report, often referred to as a ‘lessons log’, should contain the data captured during the lessons learned session and any feedback from the participants. After a final review, the report should be stored as part of the project documentation or the Project Management Office (PMO) administration documents. 

An important aspect of documentation is to action those items which may need effort applied to them. For example, if the lesson is that it took too long to book in resources, the action here is to review the resource booking process to identify improvements to reduce lead time so that this lesson is ‘learnt’ and applied to other projects in the future. Good PM methodology states that actions should be dated and owned/actioned by somebody, and then managed to meet the success criteria for that action.

Lesson logs can include an ID for each line or lesson, the related project info, date lesson captured, who logged or raised the lesson, how much of an issue this item became (1 for showstopper, 5 for negligible, as this will also help prioritize your lessons (and subsequent effort to complete actions) from most to least important), as well as if the lesson is open (still be actioned) or closed (has been actioned and completed successfully).

Atlas for easy document management

As a leading digital workplace platform for Microsoft 365, Atlas is the ideal place to create and upload project documents. Atlas makes it easy for PMO to template and provision their own Project workspaces. You could even upload your lessons log document template into the workspace template so that the same version is available within each project. Being able to upload and manage lessons learned within an Atlas Project workspace allows the project team members to view previous lessons learned from other workspaces, as well as document new lessons inside each project.

Here at ClearPeople, we have a project workspace for each implementation that our clients can access using their external user credentials. It’s here that we upload and manage previous lessons learned via our project documentation so that our clients can view shared insights and experiences.

Guideline Stage 3: Analyze and organize results

Information from the lessons learned session is shared with other teams to decide what can be done. Outcomes of the analysis could be used to improve project management processes or training.

It’s common that lessons are captured, but during project closure some of the ‘admin’ tasks fizzle out as PMs pick up newer seemingly higher priority projects. It’s essential that the lessons log is well maintained, managed, and closed as part of the project lifecycle. If the project has its own lessons log, that project shouldn’t be marked as completed and formally closed until the lessons log has been completed, reviewed, and delivered in its entirety.

Guideline Stage 4: Store the results for easy access

We often see organizations that don’t have a lessons learned repository in place. They are stored with other, irrelevant project documents on a shared drive or project library which means data is difficult to retrieve and share with the right people. Not to mention searching through different versions of reports makes it tricky for any user.

Lessons learned can be centralized so that it collates lessons from all projects, or each project can have its own lessons log which should be worked on and completed as part of the internal project closure process.

Atlas for lessons learned

Atlas helps to make sure any documentation, content, or knowledge, related to lessons learned are captured correctly. When a user searches ‘lessons learned’, everything related to lessons learned will appear for them, including notes, documents, comments, or knowledge and news pages. They do not need to go all the way to the project site documents, it can be brought back to them automatically or with one simple search from anywhere inside Atlas.

There are several ways lessons could be stored within Atlas. SharePoint lists can be created and built with bespoke columns so you can actively manage lists outside of an excel file. This can sometimes make for better sharing and reporting on granular, dynamic, items, rather than a single clunky spreadsheet.

Atlas FAQs with a simple question and answer capability can be used to store lessons learned, applying the lessons learned tag and any related tags (for example, ‘resourcing’ or ‘budget’ for quick filtering and search, and to ensure all the appropriate FAQs show up when lessons learned has been searched.

Atlas knowledge and news pages can be an excellent way to distribute news and information around lessons learned. We have seen clients in the past post PMO News Updates with titles such as ‘5 lessons we’ve learnt in PMO this quarter’ or ‘our updated process for capturing and managing lessons learned’. Tagged with the lessons learned tag, this is all good content to help inform users of both the lessons collated, as well as additional processes or guidelines on how to do this correctly.

Guideline Stage 5: Retrieve for use in current projects

For retrieval of information, it is key to have the right categories and tags applied to your reports. Without key word search capability, it is a maze to retrieve the appropriate lesson learned.

Project management office (PMO) process is important here. The lessons log should be reviewed by the PMO team and all PMs each month or each quarter to view new additions and help each other continuously improve their projects and not fall into pitfalls already experienced. This also helps reduce stress and can even improve Project Managers work life balance or leave them freer to do value added tasks.

Atlas for your lessons learned hub

The magic of the Atlas’ tagging and taxonomy functionality can be leveraged one step further.... With Atlas you can quickly and easily create a pre-configured ‘listing’ or ‘directory’ page which is pre-filtered to dynamically pull in everything related to lessons learned (that is, has been tagged with lessons learned. Additional content and webparts can also be put onto the page, so guidelines and advice about lessons learned can be easily found by anyone, including the FAQs and news and knowledge pages discussed above. This can then become the ‘hub’ or center for all things lessons learned.

Atlas for automating lessons learned

The lessons learned during a project are of immense value to the organization. But where do you store this knowledge? How do you store it? And how do you make it accessible? Create a super-highway of knowledge-based innovation and excellence with Atlas for Information and Knowledge Management.

Improve and learn from your projects with Atlas. Atlas makes it easy to find the appropriate lessons learned by correctly storing and tagging all relevant data.

Why use Atlas for your Lessons Learned?

• Tag lessons learned content for quick searching. 
• Users and project managers can easily find what they need from within 1 click.
• One source of truth where all your lessons learned can be stored. 
• Decentralized view of all lessons learned, breaking down project silos and information silos.

Why don’t you see it for yourself? Book a demo and we will show you how Atlas improves your projects with Lessons Learned.

ClearPeople

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How to Use Lessons Learned Effectively to Avoid Project Failure

Updated on: 5 January 2023

Every project is a learning experience. Failures alert us to not make the same errors again. Successes guide us to effectively navigate our current and future projects. A proper process in place for capturing these failures, wins, and areas for improvement are necessary for successful project management. This is what the project lessons learned method does. 

In this post, we’ll explore how to avoid project failures effectively using lessons learned. The templates provided throughout the post are editable online. Use them to get a move on with your tasks. 

What are Project Lessons Learned? 

Lessons learned are the key – both positive and negative – experiences collected throughout the lifecycle of a project as well as at its conclusion. Reflecting on this knowledge and understanding, you can convert what’s learned into actions needed to improve the current systems and processes and secure the success of future projects.  

For some organizations, lessons learned in project management is an informal process where they discuss and document project experiences during the closure phase. Other organizations conduct a lesson learned session at the end of each phase of a project. Project managers, project team members as well as team leaders can participate in the lessons learned session to review the reports and make the decisions on how to convert the gained insight into actions.  

Lessons learned sessions can be conducted at different phases of the project based on its complexity; at the end of each phase, at the conclusion of the project, or in real-time as it happens.

Why lessons learned should be an integral part of project management

Having the lessons learned documented and shared across the organization helps avoid and reduce the chances of failure. It also helps create best practices that can be incorporated into future endeavors. 

Conducting lessons learned sessions also help with building trust among the team members; allowing them to share their own perspective on what went right and wrong during the project will let them feel more involved and encourage them to be more supportive of the project management process.     

Ultimately, lessons learned can have a real impact on the company processes and the way the teams operate. 

The lessons learned process

The lessons learned process includes five steps. They are aimed at gleaning important lessons learned during the project from the participants of the meeting, and at determining how to successfully apply that knowledge into achieving better results with future projects. The steps are,

Step 1: Identify the lessons learned 

Start by revising what went well and what didn’t go so well during the project you’ve just completed and what needs to be improved. This should be done during the lessons learned session participated by the key stakeholders of the project. 

• In preparation for the session, the facilitator should send the participants a survey. It should include specific questions related to the different aspects of the project (i.e. project management, resources, communication, requirements, etc.).  Equally important is to obtain their feedback on what worked, what didn’t work, and what should be improved in it. Answering the survey will not only help the participants better prepare themselves for the session, but the answers themselves will help guide the discussion between them. 
• Summarize the survey results and analyze them along with other key reports during the session to identify project failures and wins. Recommendations for future project improvements should be discerned by the end of it. 

You can use a similar chart like the one below to record the feedback and key points discussed during the session.

Step 2: Document the lessons learned

The next step of the process is to document the results with a detailed report. It should include the participant’s feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of the project and recommendations for improvement. 

Once the report is complete, share it with the relevant internal and external project stakeholders. While you can create an overview of the detailed report for the leadership, the extensive report can be sent as an attachment for further reference.

Step 3: Analyze the lessons learned

During this phase of the process, analyze and organize the lessons learned in order to determine how to apply them. The required training for employees and improvements to project management processes are then decided. 

As a further step, you can create an action plan outlining the necessary steps, responsible parties/ departments, resources, and a timeline.

Step 4: Archive the lessons learned

Store all lessons learned documents in an easily accessible location, like in a shared drive (i.e. Google Drive ), making it readily available to the project team as well as other teams in the organization and stakeholders. 

Step 5: Retrieve the lessons learned 

Refer to the lessons learned documents to improve the current project processes. Optimize the retrievability of these documents by creating folders for each type of project and properly organizing them by date or project name. If the tool you use to store the reports offer keyword search capability, it would be much easier for anyone to retrieve them.

How to Avoid Project Failures with Lessons Learned

Here are a few steps you can incorporate into your project lessons learned process to ensure project success.  

Conduct lessons learned sessions frequently

Many things can go wrong or right in a project, especially if it is a large complex initiative. Therefore it would serve well to record key information sooner rather than waiting till the end of the project. As time elapses you might fail to retain key insight or in the case of a non-success, information may get intentionally looked over.

Have a standard process and set of tools 

Many organizations often fail to capture lessons learned during projects because they lack a defined process. 

A proper set of steps in place makes it seem more requisite and can aid the team to fall into a routine of recording the lessons learned during the projects. Similarly, having a predefined set of tools to use for gathering the information, storing the reports and documents, and sharing them across the organization, will further help streamline the process.    

Make use of lessons learned during risk planning

During the risk assessment of a new project , refer to the past lessons learned reports of relevant projects to identify potential risks easily. Subsequently, you can move on to developing mitigation strategies.

Have a lessons-learned team 

You can apply the lessons learned method – or actively record experiences, insight, and impressions in real-time – throughout the project. Clarify how you will be applying the method and select a team to take part in and take on an active role. 

A best practice is to include members from different areas of the project so as to collect diverse perspectives. Keep the number of team members between 3 to 10. 

Maintaining such a logbook of project experiences thus will help run more effective lesson learned sessions.

How Would You Use Lessons Learned in Project Management?

We have defined what are lessons learned in project management, the lessons learned process, and how to effectively apply the method to avoid project failure along with useful templates in this post.  

Ensure that capturing, analyzing, and learning from lessons learned is part of every project you do. Equally important is to plan for the next set of steps to effectively apply the lessons learned.  This continuous effort will help cultivate a culture of ongoing improvement within your organization.

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Hi Amanda, I love this idea! Lessons learned are huge and should be identified so they won’t happen again unless they were lessons to benefit you or others. Analyzing is key to this in project management as you have pointed out. One cannot make recommendations with problems/successes. Excellent points!

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Lessons Learned in Project Management – How to Do It Right

Every project provides valuable experience – positive as well as negative. The good news is that you can derive new insights and benefits from both! In the end, every experience can be helpful for future projects – and thus contribute substantially to future successes. Yet, how can you consciously take up this knowledge, channel it and pass it on so that it provides a real benefit? A well-known method for this is Lessons Learned in project management .

The following chapters will address this method:

• Lessons Learned definition
• Example of a possible approach
• Phase 1: Informing and building the team
• Phase 2: Gathering insights
• Phase 3: Workshop preparation
• Phase 4: Lessons Learned workshop
• Conclusion – Lessons Learned in project management

Note: Find an article on Retrospectives for Agile Projects here. This is the equivalent of Lessons Learned in traditional projects.

Let us begin with a definition of Lessons Learned .

Lessons Learned Definition Lessons learned refers to the written documentation and systematic collection, evaluation and summarization of experiences, developments, tips, errors and risks from projects. Observing and avoiding these can prove useful for future projects. (Source: Wikipedia in German language) By now, Lessons Learned has become an integral part of project portfolio management . When applied and implemented correctly, this method can be a part of your strategy for success!

Both in project management and in the PMO, the Lessons Learned method will support you in deriving insights from past project situations. What this means for new projects:

• Avoidance of mistakes
• Reduced risks
• Seizing of opportunities
• Increased project quality

Lessons Learned can be applied in different ways. This article will introduce you to an example of a proven approach .

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How Is the Lessons Learned Method Applied?

There are many ways to apply Lessons Learned in project management. Which type of approach are you familiar with?

In my experience, Lessons Learned is often only practiced at the end of a project with a simple survey of the project team.

The two classic questions are:

• What went well?
• What went badly?

The respective answers tend to be similarly superficial , as the participants may:

• Not be bold enough to say anything relevant.
• Not have had or taken the chance to prepare anything.
• Know that their statement will have no lasting effect.

Hence, this will often result in people saying what the others want to hear. Which usually is: “All went well.”

Obviously, Lessons Learned in project management can do more than that. However, it needs more room in the project. Otherwise, there will be no time to consciously apply Lessons Learned and thereby generate added value.

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Example of a Possible Approach

As previously mentioned, there are many types of Lessons Learned in project management. You will get to know one possible approach below. It is a methodology accompanying the whole length of the project – from start to finish.

The implementation consists of 4 phases:

• Informing and building the team
• Gathering phase
• Preparing the workshop

Phase 1: Informing and Building the Team

Inform your project team at the very beginning of the project that you will be applying the Lessons Learned method. This will foster transparency and understanding.

In the process, it is important to demonstrate or explain the way in which you will apply Lessons Learned .

In addition, you can use this address to inspire and motivate your team to use the method and to clear up any potential misunderstandings as well as to figure out the team’s expectations.

Subsequently, you will decide – depending on team size and structure – who will be counted as “actively involved”. You can do this alone but are equally welcome to decide this together with the team.

When building your team, make sure you include people from different areas of the project. This will enable you to capture diverse points of view.

Only those participants count as “actively involved” who take part in shaping the Lessons Learned and take on an active role. These can be selected individuals from the different project areas or the whole team. This depends on the situation and the size of the project team.

Our tip: Make sure the number of people does not end up being too high. After all, the same individuals will be the participants of the later workshop. In my experience, 3 to 10 people is a good size for a Lessons Learned team.

Phase 2: Gathering Insights

Throughout the whole project, you will be in the so-called gathering phase . During this time, every actively involved participant is called upon to document insights, experiences, impressions, etc. – positive as well as negative.

It is the collection of information that may have relevance for the subsequent Lessons Learned workshop.

To make it easier to gather information , a so-called logbook may be helpful. This is where you and your team can note down what happens on the project. This does not have to be too detailed, but it should briefly report the situation.

Our tip: The logbook can be a simple Excel table. For greater consistency, it makes sense for everyone actively involved to have the same logbook. Consider giving the logbook to the active participants symbolically as a little present. So far, this has always created a much more positive atmosphere. 😉

Phase 3: Preparing the Workshop

The workshop is the centerpiece of this Lessons Learned method . Therefore, it requires sound preparation.

Alongside the organizational matters, such as workshop materials, booking the room, etc., the preparation of the contents and order of events is key.

You need to resolve one vital question:

What topics should be covered in the workshop in order to provide the greatest benefit and the highest relevance?

For this, it is advisable to narrow down the subjects to key experiences on the project . These are the topics you should deliberately cover in the workshop.

The basis for topic identification: hold talks with your participants and thus filter out the key experiences!

To obtain a selection of correct and vital topics, you can hold talks with the active participants. This is where the logbook comes in handy. After all – if the logbook keeps a good record – it provides everyone actively involved with a mishmash of topics to choose from.

From these talks, you subsequently select the most pressing and frequently mentioned incidents .

It is important to get a good mix of positive and negative aspects, since Lessons Learned includes both areas.

Make sure you obtain a good mix of positive and negative aspects when compiling the topics. This will keep all participants motivated.

Phase 4: Lessons Learned Workshop

All previous phases were geared towards the Lessons Learned workshop . The workshop is the highlight of the method .

It is where you and your team actively work with the experiences, deduct insights and obtain recommendations for action.

To begin with, let us look at the group of participants and the agenda .

The workshop should include the following participants:

• All “actively involved” people
• The project manager
• Stakeholders (optional, but this will foster transparency and trust)
• A moderator (optional but useful)

The moderator should be from outside the project and your group of “active participants”. This means he or she should not come from the project discussed in the workshop. This makes him or her a neutral person able to conduct the workshop without bias.

Ensure that the moderator of your workshop does not come from one of the projects discussed.

The agenda takes participants through the workshop and shapes it accordingly, as you can see in the example below:

• Welcome address & project presentation
• Round of introductions & expectations
• Introduction
• Presentation of topics
• Analysis of topics & recommendations
• Next steps & transfer
• Round of feedback

1. Welcome Address & Project Presentation

The moderator opens the session and welcomes the participants. The agenda is presented.

As part of the introduction, the moderator briefly expands on the project, e.g. via a milestone plan.

2. Round of Introductions & Expectations

All participants briefly introduce themselves and state in which area or role they acted in the project. In addition, all participants mention their individual expectations of the Lessons Learned workshop.

It helps if the moderator takes down these expectations on a flip chart so that they can be referred to in the feedback round.

3. Introduction

The introduction gives the moderator the opportunity to elaborate on the approach. This ensures that all participants have the same knowledge level and clears up misunderstandings.

For instance, you can answer the following questions:

• Why do we conduct this Lessons Learned workshop?
• Who is the initiator?
• What has been the preparatory work?
• What is the focus?
• What is the goal of the workshop?

Our tip: You could consider asking these questions in the plenum thus facilitating an exchange amongst the participants. This will lighten up the mood, as all participants tend to be very tense at the beginning.

Especially for Lessons Learned workshops, we advise you to introduce rules.

The reason?

Very often, the topics are emotionally charged. Rules support the participants and act as a guiding principle. The moderator can present these rules briefly and elaborate on the individual points.

The box below shows an example of workshop rules:

Sample List of Workshop Rules Please note: Think in solutions I-statements (what have I learned; what would help me) No finger-pointing We are a team – hierarchies are dissolved … and we’re allowed to laugh 😉

5. Emotions

After the first two introductory items on the agenda, it is time to begin the operational part of the workshop.

Use emotions to get started. For example, the moderator can ask the participants to portray their emotions regarding the project as a whole. These can be visualized centrally where everyone is able to see them.

For instance, the question could be as follows: What do I feel when I think of the project as a whole?

Overall, this will create a good overview of the project or rather its atmosphere.

Our tip: Use smiley cards to capture emotions. Alternatively, you could use a scale of numbers from 1 to 10. 1 for ‘really bad’ and 10 for ‘absolutely thrilled’. As smiley cards, you can just use Post-its or moderation cards, on which the participants can draw their emotion with colored pens.

6. Presentation of Topics

Next, you present the topics which you or the team have selected during the talks in the preparation phase. You depict the individual topics to make them visible for all and provide a short explanation.

It is important that the plenum agree with the current choice of topics. Depending on the situation, you can now make changes.

Our tip: Always keep this point very open to debate. This allows the team to shape the workshop together and to put together the topics as a group.

7. Analysis of Topics & Recommendations

Analyzing the topics is the centerpiece of the workshop . This involves looking at the individual topics and working out recommendations for action.

To support the participants, you can revert to the central questions outlined below:

• Cause: How did this situation arise? What was the crucial factor?
• Effect: What was the consequence, the result, the corollary?
• Recommendations for action: What worked out well; what could have been better?

The central questions in the workshop: how did this happen, what was the consequence and what went well?

This part is a classic teamwork piece. It is possible to handle it in small individual groups or in the big group with the aid of the moderator.

Please keep in mind that recommendations for action do not only come out of negative situations. There are also successful incidents in projects that you can recommend for the future.

Watch out: There is no model solution! As every project, every project progression, every project team is unique, the corresponding recommendations for action will also be individual. Recommendations for action which are useful for one company may be practiced in a different way at another company. At yet another company, they may not be possible to implement at all due to the organizational structure. But that is the beauty of Lessons Learned in project management : aspects and possibilities that are not in the textbooks may arise from workshop and teamwork. Feel free to be creative in this respect! The only important thing is to achieve an actionable result. For example: A short daily stand-up meeting with the project team during the project phase to optimize the flow of information. A different naming or structure for the project folders in the file store to simplify the search process for documents / information. An improved formulation of the requirements and the prioritization . What can be helpful are custom-made templates based on the MoSCoW rule (Must / Should / Could / Won’t have) . They make the stakeholders’ expectations more tangible.  

The focus of this part is on the results of the presentation of topics. Now, there is a constructive discussion of the topics in the plenum. What follows is their clear formulation and documentation.

The goal is for every recommendation for action to:

• Make sense for every participant
• Be meaningful and applicable
• Find acceptance in the whole team

Work through the individual topics one after another. Thus, you end up with a recommendation for action for each point – ready to use for future projects.

9. Next Steps & Transfer

Once you have finalized the recommendations for action, it is necessary to settle the next steps. This could involve scheduling a follow-up meeting to discuss further points which have come up during the workshop.

Another interesting read: Why Have a Project Management Office (PMO)?

Moreover, you could address additional topics such as “communication” and “transfer of information”, e.g.:

• How can we carry the recommendations for action into future projects?
• Where and how can we file them so that other departments or project teams can use them?

Our tip: Pay particular attention to this part of the workshop! After all, it is where you decide how the information acquired in the workshop will be passed on to other departments and heads – hence it is essential for the PMO .

10. Round of Feedback

The feedback round is the conclusion of the Lessons Learned workshop. You are almost there!

This is every participant’s chance to recall the workshop and give feedback.

Likewise, the moderator can dwell upon the participants’ expectations taken down at the beginning of the workshop.

The session ends with the windup, i.e. the expression of thanks to the participants and the break-up of the workshop.

Conclusion – Lessons Learned in Project Management

Lessons Learned in project management is a good method for the conscious and sustainable generation of knowledge from experience.

In principle, the idea is to actively engage with the particular Lessons Learned topics or even create pivotal moments (aha effects). This will fix the knowledge better in the minds and support the learning effect.

In this article, you have learned about the most important aspects of implementing an exemplary Lessons Learned method. It has 4 phases:

• Informing and building the team (communication & assembling the team)
• Gathering phase (gathering of topics during the project)
• Workshop preparation

What is more, you have learned that Lessons Learned in project management always has to be individually adapted to the project at hand. Hence, there is no magic formula. Thus, it is important to see all examples used in the article as suggestions rather than as guidelines.

The benefit for you? Use this Lessons Learned guide to identify and implement potential for optimization in your projects!

In our experience, it has always been worth it. Have you had similar experiences?

Our final tips: Get to know the individually adaptable “PPM Paradise” – the optimal environment for your enterprise-wide project, program, portfolio and resource management (PPM). Download the free eBook “The PPM Paradise” now (just click, no form). And sign up for our bi-weekly blog newsletter with information on more hands-on articles, eBooks, etc. to improve your project management maturity level.

Any questions? We are happy to answer them and look forward to your comment in the comment field below.

Sonja Bannick, Project Expert and Blogger About the author: In her over 25 years of professional experience, Sonja Bannick has worked in various positions. So far, she has gained experience as a founder, head of operations, senior business consultant and as a managing director in various industries. Her core expertise includes holistic management consulting (strategy – people – organization – technology), managing teams and departments and developing them further. Project management has always played a central role for her. Since 2011, she has been keeping her own blog on-operations in her spare time, in which she takes up topics from her business environment and describes her views.

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Remarkable! Its truly remarkable post, I have got much clear idea concerning from this paragraph.

Thank you for your feedback. Good to hear that the post helped.

Really helpful! You summarised why do we need to use this approach and how to do it. Collecting feed-backs from our experiences is crucial, especially if we want to have a ‘company culture’ and to solve the problems in the future, but do you have any suggestions on how to store these datas and using keywords in order to find/reuse them easily?

Exceptional article! It was really very helpful. Do you have any example of how to convert the lesson learned to actionable items?

Do you have any example of how to convert the lesson learned to actionable items? The website retromat.org has a great collection of techniques for doing this. Specifically, I would look into the “Decide what to do” category there. Kind regards Antje Lehmann-Benz, MA, PMP, PMI-ACP, PSM, PSPO Trainer | Coach (Project Management, Agile, JIRA)

Very useful lesson in lesson learning in project management. Please explain which aspects of project management need more lesson learning. What is the meaning of learning organisation ?

Thank you. Regards.

Thanks for your comment! This is a reply for you from the author herself:

Hello Naben Chandra Sadhu, Lovely to hear that you liked the article and were able to draw ‘lessons’ from it.

As regards your questions: 1. The aspects of project management that are in greater need of Lessons Learned will vary from case to case. Each project, each project team, as well as the management of each individual project, is unique. Hence, the project scope, process and phases are always lived and experienced differently. Likewise, there are essentially different standards of quality. And last but not least, there is a variety of different project management methods. Therefore, it is hard to single out specific aspects. In general, one can say that Lessons Learned will be beneficial if it is applied alongside the entire course of the project to determine input for new projects. Or after each project phase (which will differ depending on the project management method or project type). My tip: just try it out where it seems to make sense – because you will learn from every experience 😉

2. What exactly did you mean by your second question? Could you maybe be a little more specific regarding the “learning organisation”?

I am happy about our exchange. Best regards Sonja

Very useful resource

Thanks! We’re happy to hear that.

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Lessons Learned in Project Management: Definition, Example, and Template

Fahad Usmani, PMP

August 24, 2022

Today we will discuss lessons learned in project management.

Every project is an opportunity to gain new experiences. This experience provides you with lessons that will be beneficial to future initiatives.

Lessons learned are part of organizational process assets and assist the project management team and the project management office (PMO) learn from the experience of previous projects.

Lessons learned help in:

• Avoiding repeating mistakes
• Using best practices
• Taking advantage of opportunities
• Improving project quality

Lessons Learned

Definition: Lessons learned are documented knowledge gained from previous projects in such a way that it can help future projects.

Lessons learned are collected throughout the project life cycle and contain all events, both positive and negative. The goal is to reuse the best practices and avoid the same mistakes in future processes and projects.

The PMBOK Guide defines the lessons learned process as a “collection of interconnected actions and activities undertaken to accomplish a specified set of goods, results, or services.”

How to Collect Lessons Learned in Project Management

The lessons learned collection process involves five steps.

• Identify: Make a list of comments and suggestions. These can be sources of information for future initiatives.
• Document: Record all information, discuss it and highlight the lessons learned during the conversation.
• Analyze: Analyze and arrange the lessons learned. They could be used in training or to enhance project management processes.
• Store: Keep a copy of the lessons learned reports on a shared disk or in the cloud to be accessible to all project teams.
• Retrieve: You can retrieve the lessons learned from the archive to be used for your current project.

Importance of Lessons Learned

Lessons learned are important because:

• They help you learn from your mistakes, and then you can stop the same issue in the next project. 
• They allow you to collect best practices for doing tasks and pass on this information.
• They help stakeholders, and team members develop trust.

You should clarify that this exercise is not to express personal rage.

You should welcome positive criticism, as the lessons learned exercise is about giving useful and constructive criticism to improve processes and avoid previous errors.

How to Document Lessons Learned in Project Management

The following are a few methods to collect and document project lessons learned. 

Post-Project Reviews

In a post-project review, you evaluate what worked and what didn’t. You can have an open and honest conversation about the project and then use this knowledge for your next project. Afterward, you can archive the results for future reference.

One-On-One Meetings

Meet one-on-one with your team members and ask for their lessons learned. You may discover that team members are more willing to offer feedback during these personalized meetings, and you may collect some valuable ideas.

Team members will discuss the accomplishments in a group discussion but may not admit mistakes. In a one-on-one meeting, individuals are less concerned about others overhearing their faults; they will speak freely.

Team Meetings

You shouldn’t wait until the end of the project to compile the lessons learned. Make it a regular exercise to record lessons learned. Inquire about what team members have learned during the week and discuss it in an open environment. Record it.

You may not get useful lessons learned in every meeting, but the process creates an environment where team members are encouraged to share their lessons learned.

Wikis/ Software

Encourage your PMO to create a wiki for lessons learned if it does not exist. They’re simple to develop and allow all team members to contribute. Keep the wiki updated throughout the project life cycle. You may also include copies of project documents such as post-project review minutes.

This makes a wiki a useful learning resource. 

Lunch Sessions

Team meetings are useful with team members, but lunch sessions have a larger audience. 

You conduct these sessions during lunch and let team members from other projects in your organization join. This helps share knowledge across different teams. 

Lunch sessions are informal meetings.

When to Document Project Lessons Learned

You should document lessons learned throughout the project life cycle .

Capturing lessons learned is a continuous process. You should encourage team members to share lessons learned whenever possible. They should not wait for a specific time but record the lesson as soon as they learn it.

Team members often don’t report negative events. You should emphasize documenting negative lessons learned, as you may repeat the same mistakes if you do not learn from them.

After collecting lessons learned, you should analyze and modify them before archiving. You can add a summary of lessons learned in a few phrases. The summary can include information on the lesson learned, its importance, and how it can be helpful for future projects.

The lessons learned should include searchable keywords, such as “testing” or “specifications.” This will help searchers find the lessons learned related to particular terms quickly.

Lessons Learned Report

At the end of the project, you will prepare a report containing lessons learned with additional feedback and ideas from team members and send it to all stakeholders to provide their comments. 

After receiving their comments, you will compile them and complete the lessons learned.

The lessons learned report includes:

• Summary: A one-page summary of the results with recommendations. 
• Executive Report: A review of the lessons learned, including what went right or wrong and how you can improve processes. 
• Findings: A summary of problems discovered throughout the evaluation.
• Recommendations: Actions to be taken in the future to avoid negative events and realize opportunities.

The project manager can deliver a report or the executive report depending on the audience. You can use newsletters, presentations, white papers, and other kinds of communication to share the lessons learned with project stakeholders.

How to Use Lessons Learned

The project manager usually conducts review meetings and presents lessons learned. 

To effectively use lessons learned, your team should have access to this document while developing the project management plan. 

The lessons learned should be from a similar project or a similar process so team members can easily co-relate and take preventive action to avoid making past errors.

Things to Consider from Lessons Learned

• What Went Well? – This includes positive experiences. If you don’t look at what went well, you may ignore using these proven strategies to realize opportunities in future projects.
• What Did Not Go Well? – This includes negative experiences. Learning from the mistakes becomes an essential aspect. Ignoring what went wrong ensures that you will repeat the same mistake.
• What Were the Anticipated Project Events? – Look at the anticipated project events and evaluate how they occurred. Learning takes place during and after each project. The most effective method is to host a meeting to discuss the lessons learned throughout the project lifecycle. 
• Were the Project Milestones Met? If Not, Why? – Project milestones are important events in the project. You must review if the project milestones were achieved on time. If not, examine the reasons so you can take preventive action and stop it from occurring in your next project.

Lessons Learned Experiences

Approach with the right attitude while preparing the lessons learned and keep the following points in mind.

Don’t Get Caught up in Past Mistakes: Don’t be obsessed with past project issues, such as a disagreement with a stakeholder or a task you failed to complete. While this can be reasonable, it is unproductive. Accept whatever unpleasant things have happened and concentrate on what you have learned.

Stakeholders Always Criticize: Even the finest project managers are subjected to criticism. This is because projects are constantly met with opposition and debate inside the organization. As a result, others will point out what you should have done differently. They won’t praise you for things you did brilliantly.

Be Willing to Learn: Accept that you may not always have the greatest solution. Certain project activities may be better planned or carried out more efficiently. You will improve if you are willing to learn.

Examples of Lessons Learned

The goal of the lessons learned process is to learn from mistakes and achievements. 

The goal of the lessons learned process is to learn from mistakes and achievements. The following are a few examples of lessons learned.

Lessons Learned for the Project Manager

• Lack of Support: If your team believes you are not supportive of client-related issues, you should make yourself available and assume leadership.
• Lack of Communication: Some issues might arise because of a lack of communication. Be proactive and ensure that all stakeholders are well communicated with and informed.

Lessons Learned for the Team

• A Lack of Team Spirit: This phenomenon is common for new teams. An informal gathering will help team members get to know each other and address this issue.
• Knowledge Sharing: When junior team members do not receive support from seniors, knowledge sharing becomes an issue. The problem can be solved by designating senior team members to mentor new team members.
• A Lack of Specialized Knowledge: Assume you’re working on an IT project in the oil and gas sector but don’t have any experts from the industry. Communicate with your organization to provide subject matter experts to support and help solve this issue.

Lessons Learned for the Company

• Lack of Organizational Alignment: Every department has its own goals; they don’t appear to be aligned with each other. This lack of alignment should be addressed from the top level.
• Weak Organization Culture: Weak corporate culture, such as criticizing employees,  instills fear in employees. Management must support an environment that fosters an atmosphere where team members can take responsibility without fear.
• Corporate Travel Policy: A corporation’s travel policy can be restrictive. Such limitations might make an already difficult and unpleasant work trip even more difficult. Loosen such tight policies.

Lessons Learned Template

Tracking lessons learned and making improvements without a defined documentation procedure is difficult. Establish a procedure starting with the kick-off meeting and documenting lessons gained throughout the project’s lifespan will prevent employees from forgetting what they’ve learned.

Lessons learned in project management is an effective approach for generating knowledge from experience. However, collecting lessons learned is not as easy as it seems because no one likes to pinpoint their faults and let others advise how they could have done it better.

Taking a critical review is vital for effective project lessons learned. Therefore, it is your responsibility as a project manager to build confidence in your team members so they can speak their minds freely. Also, make sure that no one blames other team members for any past errors.

How are lessons learned collected in your project? Please share your experiences through the comments section.

I am Mohammad Fahad Usmani, B.E. PMP, PMI-RMP. I have been blogging on project management topics since 2011. To date, thousands of professionals have passed the PMP exam using my resources.

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Everything There Is to Know about Running Lessons Learned Meetings

By Kate Eby | June 24, 2021 (updated November 18, 2021)

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Lessons learned meetings are a way to gain valuable feedback from your team about what did and did not go well in a project. Experts share advice on how to prepare for, facilitate, and act on findings from these meetings. 

In this article, you’ll learn how to run a lessons learned meeting , and find a downloadable meeting agenda template , tips and techniques for running meetings , and guidance for facilitating them remotely .

What Are Lessons Learned Meetings?

A lessons learned meeting is a collaborative feedback session in which you document what your team took away from the successes and missteps of a project. These meetings are a way to collect comments and observations and should include everyone on the team.

Why Do You Need to Hold Lessons Learned Meetings?

In a lessons learned meeting, the team documents successes and missteps in order to help build team unity. By involving every team member in the process, you can build trust, foster development, and encourage an environment of learning from mistakes and improving processes.

Patti Armanini , Quality Manager of FESTO USA, explicitly highlights one of the advantages of holding ongoing lessons learned meetings. “One of my best lessons learned was on a very large project between my company and our customer in the defense sector. We did lessons learned meetings at critical stages throughout the project. This helped to keep us ahead of deadlines by identifying roadblocks cleared and roadblocks not foreseen at the beginning that could have caused a significant delay in the project. For example, a 60-day waiting period that we did not know of at the outset, but were able to adjust into our schedule with minimal frustration.”

When Should You Hold a Lessons Learned Meeting?

You should hold lessons learned meetings as often as you feel is necessary. However, depending on the scope of your project, you may find that having a routine for holding ongoing meetings is more beneficial than doing just one retrospective meeting at the end.

You can hold a lessons learned meeting at the beginning of a new venture to review lessons learned from past projects and brainstorm ways to apply them in the present. You should also have meetings at regular intervals throughout your project lifecycle, or as your team finishes predetermined tasks.

Kathy Hallstein , Senior Customer Success Manager at SAP SuccessFactors, recommends  always holding a final lessons learned meeting to wrap up the end of any large-scale project. “There are always roadblocks during the project that you may forget if not addressed immediately following completion. It’s an excellent time to get the entire team together to document what to improve on the next project or share with other groups. A successful post-mortem is when everyone participates and you document the roadblocks, how they were resolved, and how they will be addressed in the future. Assign action items, owners, and an expected completion date (ECD). I would suggest keeping a version and date on those documents.” 

Following Hallstein’s advice will provide closure for the team and allow you a chance to document any additional large-scale lessons learned. To learn more about post-mortem meetings, read our guide to post-mortem in business and download free post-mortem templates to help you get started.

How to Prepare for a Lessons Learned Meeting

When preparing for a lessons learned meeting, you’ll want to invite team members, form an agenda, and book a space.

• Invite Participants: Ask those planning to attend to review the project’s outset goals and prepare questions. If this meeting occurs before the end of a project, consolidate your notes from previous lessons learned sessions and send them as a refresher.
• Create an Agenda: Be sure to consider the things you need to discuss and your audience size, as the number of participants may affect the order of events or the total time allotment for the meeting. Generally, meetings should last no more than an hour, but make sure to allow ample time for each agenda item. Include time for a brief introduction, feedback and discussion, and to highlight next steps.
• Arrange the Room: Come prepared with writing utensils and sticky notes or printouts. Designate a note-taker or secure whiteboards or wall space so everyone can see the comments. Provide comfortable seating for all attendees, and consider providing snacks and light refreshments for the meeting as well. Additionally, send meeting invites to remote attendees and set up a virtual room along with the physical one. Read our article with a list of 130+ remote collaboration tools for more information about working with teams remotely.
• Consider a Facilitator: A facilitator may help smooth the flow of conversation for a team that is not comfortable sharing opinions openly. Pick a facilitator who is familiar with the project and the team, but not directly involved — perhaps another project manager or someone who has led a similar project in the past.

How to Structure a Lessons Learned Meeting

Meetings should include a brief introduction, time to gather and discuss feedback, and a plan for next steps. Here’s a breakdown of those steps:

• Introduction: Make introductions by sharing the agenda. At this time, establish ground rules by letting everyone know why they are here and what you expect from them.
• Gather Feedback: Facilitate discussion and participation from team members. Encourage everyone to give input. Remind them that you want to know what went right and wrong in the project so you can all learn from the experience. Have the designated note-taker document all the feedback.
• Evaluation: Discuss the feedback and use it as a basis for critically examining the lessons learned. Organize observations into lists or categories and begin to brainstorm answers to problems. 
• Conclusion: Recap the lessons learned and assign action items to specific team members. Ask for final comments and thank everyone for attending.
• Follow-Up: Organize the feedback and create reports to send to attendees. Ensure that you follow up on action items within a predesignated timeframe.

Lessons Learned Meeting Agenda Template

It is essential to set an agenda for your meeting so that participants know what to expect and can come prepared. Use this lessons learned agenda template to help you structure the meeting. You’ll find space for meeting objectives, team discussion, and action items for future projects — simply edit the sample copy to meet your needs. See our lessons learned templates article for more options.  

Download Lessons Learned Meeting Agenda Template

How to Run a Lessons Learned Meeting

Running a lessons learned meeting is no small task. The project manager or a neutral third party will generally facilitate meetings, but all meetings should follow the same format.

1. Prepare Ahead of Time: You must come to the meeting prepared to facilitate, and team members must come prepared to participate. You may consider polling participants on which meeting times work best for them. Send meeting invites, and include any relevant notes from past discussions. Attach the meeting agenda to the invite, and ask participants to prepare comments and questions. Ensure that the room where your session takes place is ready ahead of time with chairs, writing utensils, and refreshments.

With a larger group, or for an unsuccessful project, you may want to gather input ahead of time through an anonymous survey. Armanini suggests asking participants the following questions and presenting the findings anonymously at the meeting to ease and encourage discussion:

Download Anonymous Pre-Survey for Lessons Learned Meetings — PDF 

Anonymous Pre Survey for Lessons Learned Meetings

• Name three things you feel are going well.
• Name three things you feel are not going well.
• Name three processes you would change to address your answers to the previous question.

2. Introduce your Meeting: Thank everyone for coming and encourage them to get comfortable. Consider going around the room and having attendees introduce themselves if the meeting consists of multiple teams or departments.

3. Lead Discussion and Encourage Team Input: Allow and encourage everyone to give feedback and write it all down, and ensure that everyone has a chance to speak. Organize feedback notes into sections or categories that relate to the process or the project. You may consider asking the following questions:

• What did we do well? 
• What processes need improvement? 
• How well was your role on this project defined? 
• How effective was teamwork and leadership?

As the facilitator, aim to keep the conversation neutral and avoid finger-pointing or shifting blame. Depending on the size of your group, it might be beneficial to split into smaller groups to facilitate the conversation and amplify the voices of people less willing to share in a large group setting.

4. Evaluate the Feedback: Once you have recorded attendee feedback on a whiteboard or note pad, it is time to examine it critically. Review the notes as a group and determine the most pressing issues. Having the group vote on which topics they feel are the most important can help everyone feel included and valued. Start brainstorming solutions to these issues together. If possible, create action items and assign them to a group member for follow up.

5. Conclude and Thank Everyone: Recap the most critical discussion items and their actionable solutions. Ensure that everyone responsible for a solution knows when to follow up. Ask for any last-minute questions or comments, and thank everyone for their participation. If this is your final meeting for the project, consult our project closing and retrospect guide for more advice and best practices.

6. Follow Up: Organize the meeting notes and create a lessons learned report to share with meeting attendees. Check in with those who were assigned action items and confirm they have everything they need to implement changes.

Rules for a Lessons Learned Meeting

Set ground rules for your lessons learned meetings so that everyone is heard, the team builds trust, and the meeting is productive and useful going forward. 

Example ground rules are as follows: 

• Do not pass blame or point fingers. The good and bad should be impersonal or applicable to the whole team. Also consider allowing anonymous input by way of a survey before the meeting. 
• Everyone gets to speak or give feedback, and one person speaks at a time.
• Remain present: No phones or computers! 
• Meet in person whenever possible.
• Stay on topic and stick to the agenda. Provide suggested times on the agenda for this reason. Don’t go over and lose engagement.

Techniques for Running a Lessons Learned Meeting

When running a lessons learned meeting, hold a round-table talk and collect feedback openly. Take notes on a whiteboard or a large notepad. Create columns for what did and did not go well, and ask participants to add comments.

When a project is successful, a team will generally feel good and be open to discussion. Use methods like Mad, Sad, Glad, Add or Stop, Start, Continue to help organize thoughts. In these exercises, attendees consider what parts of the process made them mad, sad, or glad, and what they would stop, start, and continue in the future. See our Mad, Sad, Glad and Stop, Start, Continue fillable templates for use in your meetings.

Stick to your ground rules, and consider establishing a talking stick rule, wherein the only person speaking is the person holding a “talking stick,” or even a coffee mug or something similar.

You may need to try different approaches in larger gatherings or for not-so-successful endeavors. Always consider the group size, your team’s success (or lack of) on the project, and how outspoken its members are when considering what techniques to use.

Primary Lessons Learned Success Criteria

The success of a lessons learned meeting lies in its ability to identify successes, resolve issues within a project, and strengthen the team’s bond. A successful lessons learned meeting will do the following:

• Generate Feedback for Reports: One of the biggest takeaways from any lessons learned meeting is the report generated from the input gathered. Make sure to encourage participation and take great notes.
• Leave Team Members Feeling Heard: Everyone should have the opportunity to provide feedback, both positive and negative, without fear of reprisal. Clarify that there are no repercussions for sharing to help foster growth and unity within the team.
• Identify Potential Changes to Processes: Use the minds in your team to crowdsource changes to processes that are not working well. Ask them how things can be done better and use their input for future projects.

Lessons Learned Meeting Outcomes

At the end of a lessons learned meeting, you should feel good about the whole process. Ultimately, the process of identifying lessons learned should unify the team. 

Hallstein defines a successful lessons learned session as "when everyone participates and you have documented the roadblocks, how they were resolved, and how they can be addressed in the future.” 

A successful lessons learned meeting will also do the following:

• Answer Questions: Your team should voice their questions and concerns, and receive answers when possible.
• Acknowledge the Success of a Team: Even if the project as a whole was unsuccessful, it is important to praise the things your team did well.
• Encourage More Cohesive Teams: As a team works and improves together, they build trust.
• Identify the Processes that Need Improvement: Even successful projects have areas that you can fine-tune. 
• Establish Easily Measured Follow-Up Actions: Assign tasks to team members and follow up with them later. Ensure they have the tools they need to complete these actions on time.
• Improve Processes Over Time: By documenting the change in processes over time through lessons learned, it is easy to track improvements within a team and a company.

Lessons Learned Meeting Follow Up

After any meeting, you will likely produce different reports for people with varying levels of engagement within the project. Send those reports out to meeting participants within a few days, and label and store those reports somewhere for future reference, like a shared drive or cloud storage. 

For more information on lessons learned reports, read our “ Guide to Lessons Learned in Project Management .”

You may also consider sending out a follow-up survey to attendees to gauge their feelings on how the meeting went. Use that information to tailor your facilitation techniques for the future.

Benefits of Lessons Learned Meetings

There are far-reaching benefits to lessons learned meetings. An entire organization benefits from the experience of a single team. Multiply that by the many teams within a company, and you can see how quickly these meetings become a force for change.

On a smaller scale, holding lessons learned sessions creates more cohesive teams and better project managers. By highlighting a team’s accomplishments and taking steps to learn and grow from their failures, you can foster trust between team members and the system as you all grow as professionals.

It is critical to establish and follow best practices when recording and storing lessons learned documents. Create an intuitive naming scheme that includes the date of the project or meeting, and store reports and documents in an easily accessible place. Set up a shared searchable database of lessons learned reports and meeting notes.

Tips for Facilitating Lessons Learned Meetings

A meeting for a project that went well will run a little differently than for one that did not. Consider your group size and the success of your project when choosing which techniques to utilize.

• Choose Your Time and Place Wisely: Choose a time and place that works for everyone with no conflicts. Use a meeting scheduling tool, such as Doodle, and send out a poll ahead of time for people to volunteer available time slots.
• Write Notes Where Everyone Can See Them: When possible, use a whiteboard or a large notepad to write down team member input. If your meeting is remote, use a shared screen to keep everyone on track and feeling acknowledged. 
• Stick to Your Agenda: Do not let your meeting go long or veer off course. Keep attendees focused by being accountable for their time.
• Encourage Everyone to Contribute: Gather as much input from as many people as possible. Encourage everyone to share their thoughts, and treat everyone’s feedback the same.

Tips for Facilitating Large Lessons Learned Meetings

Large groups require additional planning. You may decide to use a survey prior to the meeting to gather feedback to save time, or even split a large meeting into smaller groups.

Tips for Facilitating Lessons Learned for Unsuccessful Projects

Not every project is successful. Your approach for facilitating these lessons learned meetings should focus on anonymity and sharing the responsibility for the loss.

• Do Not Place Blame: Use techniques like Mad, Sad, Glad to shift focus from any one person to the team’s experience at large. This approach can help smooth things over without highlighting any one person’s mistakes.
• Anonymous Surveys: Collect feedback anonymously before the session, and ensure it stays anonymous. Organize anonymous input and present it to the group without any identifying information.
• Utilize a Third-Party Facilitator: Armanini suggests using an outside facilitator for projects with an undesirable outcome. “If I'm the one running the session, it needs to be with a team that trusts me fully so that I get honest feedback.” Using a facilitator “can help to take some of the emotion out of the session,” she says.

Tips for Facilitating Remote Lessons Learned Meetings

Remote meetings are always a little tougher than those done in person. Remote meetings should strive to maintain focus, encourage participation, and adhere to a schedule.

Hallstein provides the following ideas to ensure successful remote meetings:

• Always turn on your video. Be presentable, professional, and meet your participants eye to eye. It’s so important to see body language in order to know if they agree, don’t agree, or if you’ve just lost them and need to step it up. 
• Review expectations at the beginning of the meeting, and summarize them at the end to ensure they were met. 
• Document minutes, action items, owners, and ECDs. Share these notes, or post them in a shared drive where everyone knows how to find them and has access. 
• Mute your line when you’re not talking.

In addition, ensure that you do the following in a remote meeting:

• Share a Screen while Documenting Input: Just like using a whiteboard in person, write down notes in real-time where everyone can see them.
• Use Surveys and Other Online Tools to Encourage Engagement: Send out a survey prior to the meeting to gather input and prepare charts and visual aids to keep attendees engaged.
• Keep to Your Agenda: Most people only stay engaged in a meeting for the first 45 minutes. Make sure that your meeting stays informative, but does not go too long.

To learn more tips for remote teams, read our guide to effectively managing remote teams .

Tools for Running a Lessons Learned Meeting

Running a lessons learned meeting doesn’t have to be complicated. There are many tools available across many platforms to ease the process, including the following:

• Survey Tools: Use surveys to determine time slots for your meeting or to gather anonymous feedback before a session. You can also use surveys to gather information about the meeting you’ve just held and how to improve it next time. “Typically when I use Zoom or Teams, you can throw up a survey at the end. You can also create a survey for later, to give participants time to digest the information and then give feedback,” suggests Hallstein.
• Graphic Tools: Create charts and graphs from feedback gathered during pre-meeting surveys. Display them in your introduction, or as you discuss these points.
• Display Tools: Create slideshows to display graphics and input from surveys or previous meetings. 
• Storage Tools: Invest in quality storage locations that are accessible to the whole team, like a shared database or cloud drive. Make your lessons learned findings easily accessible for future use.
• Writing Tools: Don’t discount the usefulness of pen and paper. Sticky notes and a large notepad or whiteboard can be a great way to keep your attendees engaged and contributing.

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12 Steps To Writing a Lessons Learned Report [Free Template]

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Before we dive into the steps of writing a lessons learned report , let’s go through what lessons learned report itself is. A lessons learned report is one of the most important documents of a project . Every important event, challenge, constrain, risk, and uncertainty faced during the project are documented in a lessons learned report along with the healthy and timely solutions you came up with for them.

Now, why is it important to write a lessons learned report when the project can be completed without it? Well, it is important to write a lessons learned report to record the desired outcomes and solutions for all future projects. In this way, it helps in avoiding the same mistakes again. The lessons learned report from the previous projects can be viewed and analyzed before starting a new project to remember the mistakes that are not to be made.

Not only this, a lessons learned report is helpful throughout the same project as well. When you put in all the lessons learned at the end of every step/major task, it helps greatly in the next step. Therefore, it is important to write and review lessons learned report.

When you plan to write a lessons learned report for your project, an important thing to consider is that which will be the healthiest and best steps to write it. To ease that for you, we have developed some beneficial steps that can help you along the way. So the 12 easy steps for writing a lessons learned report are:

1. Take Help From Different Project Documents That Are Already Prepared

To make effective lessons, learned report, taking help from different project documents that are already prepared is very beneficial. Such reports provide a documented piece on all the ups and downs faced in the project.

It might be some cost calculation report; resources report, project progress report or an analysis report. As these reports contain all the important data regarding the project, there must be important findings and solutions to the potential risks that you can include in the lessons learned report.

Thus, reading all the important project documents and utilizing them in the best possible way is a key step to draw a lessons learned report.

2. Assess The Goals And Objectives

Whenever you come across something that you think is important to include in a lessons learned report, wait a minute. Before doing that, assess the goals and objectives of the project as well as of the lessons learned report to make sure they are healthy for the overall project framework.

If there is a lesson that is important but is not relevant to the core goals and objectives of the project, you must not include it in a lessons learned report. In order to ensure whether any learned lesson is feasible to be a part of the report, check:

• The goals and objectives of the project are relevant to it?
• Has the lesson made any difference to the outcomes of your project?
• Will it be helpful for the future projects of the same nature?
• What do you aim to achieve with this specific lesson?

When you have positive answers to this kind of questions, you have well assessed the goals and objectives. You can then include those lessons learned in the report.

3. Be Clear On The Report’s Audience And Purpose

Now, the next step is to find your audience. At times, you are not clear of the audience you are targeting with the lessons learned report. Sometimes a lessons learned report is for the team while, at other times, it is for the stakeholders. Most of the times, it is entirely for the project manager himself.

Some important audience of a lessons learned report are:

• The project team and field staff: The lessons learned report includes challenges during meetings, training workshops, communication tools, data collection tools, and everything related to the project team and field staff.
• Stakeholders: Lessons learned report for stakeholder includes the approaches and methodologies that worked best in engagement and interaction with the stakeholders.

This helps in not only determining the audience of the report but also clears the main purpose of the report by targeting a specific audience.

4. Make Sure You Know What Is Going Right In The Project

It is a healthy step to stay aware of all the positive outcomes and beneficial results of the project. It helps in boosting the morale of the team and keep them motivated . When you are aware of what is going right in the project, you are open towards all the potential risks or uncertainties that can come in the way.

As you are confident of the measures you took before, you can implement them again in case any problem appears. So, ensuring that you know all the positive aspects and right dimensions of the project helps you stay on track in time.

5. Make Sure You Know What Is Going Wrong In The Project

When you know what is going right in the project, it is equally important to know what is going wrong in the project. When you are aware that the project is not going in the right or decided dimension, you can work on it.

How can you know if something is going wrong in the project? The answer is simple. Check your project activities with the project schedule and management plan. You can check whether the results and outcomes are positive or not. Also, if there are any delays in the project deliverables, something is causing it a hindrance and identifying that cause lest you know what is going wrong in the project. 

So make sure you know what is going wrong in the project so you can deduce the solution and then include them in the lessons learned report.

6. Compare Costs And Results Of Different Activities

A lessons learned report is about the ups and downs faced during project activities . As each project activity has a specific cost (which in many cases can be the project resources), it has the desired result according to that. Therefore, you need to compare the costs and results of different activities to ensure if they are aligned.

This step helps in coming up with advantageous material to include in the lessons learned report.

7. Come Up With All The Improvements And Solutions

Once you identify the risks and uncertainties in the project, you along with your team, will be working on the improvements and solutions. Finally, you come up with all the improvements and solutions that lead the project in the right direction.

Now that is what a lessons learned report is all about — coming up with the improvements and solutions for the encountered or potential problems of the project. These improvements and solutions need to be included in the lessons learned report to utilize them at later stages, or in the future relevant projects.

8. Do a Comprehensive Analysis Of The Lessons Learned

It is not important to include full-fledged problem along with its solution in the lessons learned report. It is better to do a comprehensive analysis of the lessons learned. This ensures that only the important aspects of the lessons are included in the report . These help in coming up with the on point and timely solutions for the problems that are faced in future projects.

Furthermore, it saves the readers from wasting time on the extra details that render no use later on. Also, it makes the report comprehensive and readable. Thus, it serves the exact purpose of a lessons learned report.

9. Structure The Report In a Good Format

When you have come up with all the problems , risks, and challenges along with their improvements and solutions, you are ready to inculcate them in a document that would be called a lessons learned report. Before that, deciding the format of the report is an important step so you can structure the report in the most readable and convenient manner.

A good format helps with the comprehensive as well as organized reporting. A good format and structure have the following important elements:

• Summary : An executive summary of the lessons learned report is written by the end of the report but included in the beginning. It is the most important section of the lessons learned report. It gives a brief account of the audience and purpose of the report so the reader might know if he needs to continue reading the report.
• Introduction : An introduction is a comprehensive part that provides context and outline of the report.
• Findings and discussions : This is the detailed part that includes all the learned lessons along with their outcomes, analysis , and future significance. Make sure it’s to-the-point, and no irrelevant material is included.
• Conclusion and recommendation : This is the last part of the report that binds all the elements included in the report in a concise and clear way. The recommendations include the next steps that can be taken for further improvements.

When your lessons learned report is structured in this format, you are done with the most important step of writing a lessons learned report.

10. Draw Summaries Or Full-Fledged Report As Per The Project’s Need

Now, you might not need a full-fledged report for a small scale project. For such kind of projects, it is convenient and better to draw just the summaries of the learned lessons. Those can be done combined to produce a report. Make sure you consider the project needs, so you do not end up wasting time in something that is not required.

11. Make Sure The Report Is Readable

Another significant step is to ensure that the project is readable. If the project is not readable, the reader might not be able to deduce the positive results from the report. This renders your efforts zero. Therefore, you need to make sure that the report is accessible and convenient to read. In this way, a reader enjoys as he reads through the report because he is gaining a lot out of it.

To make a report readable, it is advised to use good formatting, some visuals and graphics, and breaking up long sections into smaller ones.

12. Re-Read And Edit The Report If Needed

Last but not least, a lessons learned report is like any other report which is drafted before compiling. So once you have drafted your report, re-read it to make sure there are no human errors. If there are any, you must go towards the editing part.

Re-reading and editing is a healthy step to take. It makes sure that your lessons learned report is serving the right purpose, has a clear audience, and is not a piece of waste.

A good and positive lessons learned report shows that you and your team are sincere to your roles and responsibilities . Therefore, above-mentioned are the 13 instrumental and valuable steps that you can take to write a lessons learned report. These steps ensure that you do not just produce a lessons learned report as the part of the project that needs to be done but, a part of the project that serves you and your team greatly in the future as well.

Click  here  to download Lessons Learned Report Template.

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Home PowerPoint Templates Diagrams Lessons Learned Diagram PowerPoint Template

Lessons Learned Diagram PowerPoint Template

The Lessons Learned Diagram PowerPoint Template is a set of three slides to itemize up to eight elements. With core concept in the middle i.e. lessons learned, the templates show infographic icons to visualize textual contents. This template provides a visual aid for lessons learned from previous mistakes, project failures, and difficult situations. The lesson learned diagram assists a team of professionals to practice positive aspects and not repeating the mistakes.

Lessons learned is a famous term of project management documents learning gained from past projects or processes. Keeping track of the lessons in past activities helps the team to avoid similar situations or improve actions for tackling them. The PowerPoint diagram for lessons learned is useful for project planning and strategy meetings. A presenter can demonstrate a list of issues that may arise during project phases and discuss future actions or behaviors.

Lesson Learned Diagram PowerPoint Template slides are comprised of high-definition graphics and icons. Each item consists of an arrow pointing towards the lessons learned in the center. There are 8-item, 6-item, and 4-item diagrams to be used according to the complexity and length of projects. You can also combine two or more slides if items on the lessons learned document are more than eight. Download and present the lessons learned in internal team meetings, or to the project stakeholders. Project managers, team leaders, and business executives can take advantage of these slides for a variety of purposes.

The lesson learned PowerPoint is easy to customize templates. Users can change gradient shades, icons, or backgrounds to match the project presentation theme. The items on left and right sides of the circular unit explain best practices and ideas to improve upcoming project activities. This PPT template can also present lessons learned in life situations, annual business reports, or career coaching presentations.

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Lessons Learned PowerPoint Templates & Slides For Presentations

Using our Lessons learned PowerPoint templates, you can easily capture the key learnings, which helps to improve any organization or project. Lessons learned are the information that reflects both the positive and negative experiences and that experiences are great opportunities to learn valuable lessons. You can implement proven good practices for excellent performance on your future projects and not repeat the previous mistakes in these lessons learned presentation templates. Project managers can use the project management lessons learned slide to showcase innovative approaches and strategies to use the best practices and guide the team not to repeat the same mistakes. Our creative collection of lessons learned PPT templates are widely used by entrepreneurs, team leaders, marketing managers, and product managers to showcase their learnings and experiences. These lessons learned templates are 100% customizable, you can easily change the color, size, or other edits as per your presentation needs. Browse through our professional collection of downladable free ppt templates   to showcase project management-related activities and plans.

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The Lessons Learned PowerPoint templates go beyond traditional static slides to make your professional presentations stand out. Given the sleek design and customized features, they can be used as PowerPoint as well as  Google Slides templates . Inculcated with visually appealing unique and creative designs, the templates will double your presentation value in front of your audience. You can browse through a vast library of Lessons Learned Google Slides templates,  PowerPoint themes  and  backgrounds  to stand out in your next presentation.

What Is A Lessons Learned PowerPoint Template?

A Lessons Learned PowerPoint template is a ready-made presentation template that provides a structured framework for creating professional Lessons Learned presentations. The Lessons Learned PPT presentation template includes design elements, layouts, and fonts that you can customize to fit your content and brand.

What Are The Advantages Of Lessons Learned Presentation Templates?

Lessons Learned PPT presentation templates can be beneficial because they:

• Add multiple visual and aesthetic layers to your slides.
• Ensure that complex information, insights and data is presented in a simplistic way.
• Enhance the overall visual appeal of the content.
• Save you a lot of time as you don’t have to start editing from scratch.
• Improve the professional outlook of your presentation.

How To Choose The Best Lessons Learned Presentation Templates?

Keep the following points in mind while choosing a Lessons Learned Presentation template for PowerPoint (PPT) or Google Slides:

• Understand your presentation goals and objectives.
• Make sure the Lessons Learned template aligns with your visual needs and appeal.
• Ensure the template is versatile enough to adapt to various types of content.
• Ensure the template is easily customizable.

Can I Edit The Elements In Lessons Learned PowerPoint Templates?

Yes, our Lessons Learned PowerPoint and Google Slides templates are fully editable. You can easily modify the individual elements including icons, fonts, colors, etc. while making your presentations using  professional PowerPoint templates .

Are Lessons Learned PowerPoint Templates Compatible With Google Slides?

Yes, all our Lessons Learned presentation templates are compatible and can be used as Lessons Learned Google Slides templates.

How To Download Lessons Learned PowerPoint Templates For Presentations?

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• Select the resolution (16*9 or 4*3).
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Lessons Learned

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Lessons learned is the knowledge gained from the process of conducting a project. This includes positives and negatives. The idea is to repeat the positives aspects and not repeat the mistakes. Most project managers understand the importance of lessons learned on current and future projects. Capturing and regularly updating the lessons learned can keep the project on track. In the long run, it can also help continually improve how organizations execute projects. The lessons learned process involves 5 steps with activities that will capture and use lessons learned. The steps are: identify, document, analyze, store, retrieve.

The Lessons Learned template is primarily intended for project managers, but can also be used by professionals in other fields. The first slide of this template invites us to describe a sequence of actions that will help make the project better. At the first stage, hypotheses are discussed, then experimentation and ultimately implementation. This slide can be used to prepare the interaction of various departments of the company when working on one project. The closed-loop shown in the slide shows that experimentation can be repeated several times until the desired result is achieved. This slide can be used by research organizations, laboratories, development departments of the company when preparing a report on their research. The second slide is presented in the form of a table, which is a structured way that represents the process of working on a project while making the only correct decision. This slide will be useful for a scrum master when they conduct sprints with the development team and the product owner. The next slide provides an opportunity to describe the main events that occur in the project, give recommendations, and take actions that will take into account previous mistakes. The slide can be used when drawing up instructions for operating equipment or working on a machine with repetitive operations. This slide can be used by occupational safety specialists when drawing up safety rules for working with equipment. This slide will also be useful for business trainers when preparing courses. The last slide is presented in four stylish blocks. Here you can also describe the necessary measures to improve the project. You can also use this slide when preparing a presentation about a new product, describing the advantages of the product over its competitors.

The Lessons Learned template is made in soft colors, but you can change the colors to cool ones or those that are your corporate colors. The template will be useful when preparing instructions, rules, describing repetitive processes. You can also use this template when analyzing negative results that led to increased costs or termination of the contract. These slides can be used by team leaders in their daily or weekly meetings. Lessons Learned template is easy to use and does not require deep knowledge of PowerPoint. You can by himself change the sizes of fonts and blocks, and change their position on the slide. Be sure to complement your collection with this modern and stylish template.

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