DJ Waldow • Updated on Aug 28, 2024 • 11 min read
Link Copied!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.
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:
This type of organization means a comprehensive summary of how people worked together, reacted to setbacks, and executed tasks.
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, valuable insights, and learnings.
To learn more about this phase of the project life cycle, read our blog on project closure.
While we could probably list 100+ reasons, the top 3 are:
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.
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.
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.
First, assemble representatives from all involved parties — the labor team, management team, and project stakeholders. Then, provide a copy of the following lessons learned template and ask them to fill it in honestly.
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.
Here’s an easy format your team should follow:
This feedback gives you several key 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).
For each of these insights write down the following:
monday.com makes it easy to request, record, and analyze feedback and turn this feedback into actionable improvements for future projects. You can easily create a board, tag the relevant team members, rate each aspect of the project, leave notes, and outline action items for the future. So next time you’re faced with a similar project, you can access this feedback from anywhere and use it to guide your actions.
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.
For more complex projects creating the board might not be enough. You may actually have to present all the various project management lessons you’ve learned to all the relevant teams and stakeholders, especially if you are going to be working on another project together.
Here are some quick tips:
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:
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.
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 and share at your next meeting.
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) project management templates to help manage workflow and complete successful projects.
Want to improve your project performance? Check out some of our best templates below.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
All lessons learned documents should cover the following:
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.
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.
Examples of lessons learned include – support your team (you might need to dedicate more resources to a specific part of the project), communicate clearly, give praise often, structure the team differently, set different goals for each milestone.
DJ is a freelance writer specializing in all things words. He's a father of 4 (including twins), husband to one, and an alum of the University of Michigan. DJ is a self-proclaimed giphy master and #HashtagAddict.
