Writing the PRINCE2 Lessons Report 

Writing the PRINCE2 Lessons Report

Lessons Report in PRINCE2

The end project report is created as part of the closing a project process and within it is contained the lessons report.  However, the lessons report may be created at the end of stage, particularly if such lessons can be usefully applied to the current project all that it makes sense to avail of these lessons via the lessons report, to other projects within the organization.  Such lessons reports will be included within the end stage report.

You may recall that the lessons learned log is set up as part of the starting up a project process as it is used to capture any known or sought-out lessons to be applied to the project from the very start.

If you have a project office in your organization, then they should look after your lessons report so that it will help advise other project managers of any lessons that may affect their project.

Whenever PRINCE2 is applied to any project, it is important to tailor the method to suit the size, complexity and risk of the project.  This will apply equally to the lessons report, and any opportunity taken to reduce, combine and simplify the following content sections of the lessons report:

Lessons Report Contents.

Executive summary.

This provides an overview of the key areas that the lessons report covers.

Scope of the report.

This will normally state whether the lessons report covers the lessons gained within a particular stage, or whether it covers the entire project.

Review.

A good way of structure in this section is to split it into what went well and what went badly sections.  Each item should include how to optimize and implement those parts that went well, and possible actions that may have been taken to minimize or remove those areas that went badly.

This section within the lessons report could review the tailoring of PRINCE2 and how this could be improved on future projects, any changes for improvements made to the various project approaches contained within the project initiation documentation, changes to the method or implementation of the various project controls, and changes or improvements to any specialist methods used (this could cover methods to create the specialist products, or modification to a management method such as change-control.

Finally, any suggestions for how the project controlled abnormal events that caused deviations from plan.

A review of useful measurements.

This could include just about anything that was measured during the project with the focus on improving such measurements in the future.

Aspects to consider are; estimating work effort to create the products, how effective the quality management strategy was particularly in the reporting of quality statistics, and the statistics on issues and risks.  The latter point may focus on the amount and severity of such issues and risks and whether or not they were as anticipated.

It is recommended that you use the PRINCE2 approach to issue and risk management when laying out the lessons report by including the following attributes of each lesson.

• The situation or event that gave rise to the lesson involved
• Whether the event had a positive or negative effect
• The root cause or trigger that it had to the lesson
• Were there any early warning indicators
• What recommended actions should be taken.

Finally, whether or not the triggered event had been previously identified as a risk (either as a threat or an opportunity).

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