After a game, an athlete either celebrates with the team or wallows in the loss. But the next morning, the best players are watching game tapes. What did I do right? Where did I, literally or figuratively, drop the ball? What can I do differently for the next game? In business, just because a project has been completed, doesn’t mean it’s “done.” There is one more crucial step to take: the project review. Like the athlete with his game tape, we need to look more closely at what we did and didn’t do and the lessons learned for next time.

To those who have worked for months on an initiative or set of initiatives, project reviews can seem like detention on the first day of summer vacation. And, oftentimes, they’re about as effective.

Here are my best practices for teams, steering committees, and executives to ensure these reviews have value:

1.     Take a High-Level Look at the Project

It’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae. There were 12 meetings a week instead of 14, or 14 instead of 12. We get bogged down in details concerning how the project was actually executed, rather than taking a high-level look.

It is more helpful to start at the top and then drill down. Did we have an effective steering committee? Did it have enough power? Was there a proper governance structure in place? Did we hit our deliverables? Did we get the big things right?

2.     Examine What Was Right – and What Was Wrong

Reviews are an opportunity to examine what we liked and what we did not. What three things should we change and improve upon for next time? How do we do that? What would the impact be for the next project? Learning from your successes is a wonderful gift, but learning from your mistakes is usually more valuable.

3.     Develop Tools for Future Projects

Part of the “lessons learned” approach is to have something to take away from the project experience, something to take back to the PMO or Centre of Excellence. “Here are the lessons we’ve learned; here are the tools and resources we need to make sure are in place for the next project.”

Here’s an example: the Steering Committee issued excellent reports that outlined next steps, gave executives the right financial data & addressed top risks. They gave executives and working teams the information needed. These reports form a template for future Steering Committees. When teams find things that work, they can be modified and honed over time. This works for status reports, project plans, risk logs, issue logs, and so on.

There is room for customization with these templates, but we can move them from project to project so we don’t have to start from zero.

4.     Go Beyond Measuring Deliverables

Reviews often focus on whether deliverables were met; whether timelines were kept. That is a big part of project success – but there is also the people aspect:

Were business owners happy with what happened? Were they well informed? Did they understand the implications of changes and why they were made? Is there a change management program in place? Were stakeholders down the line being communicated with? Did they know the intended outcome? If we hit our outcomes, did they know what they’re supposed to do?

There are a variety of targets beyond deliverables that you want this review to cover:

• What did we learn?
• How did the team respond to the project?
• Was communication effective?
• Was the governance structure sound?
• What, specifically, can we do next time?
• What tools can we develop to transfer to future projects?

The success of a project is usually measured in whether it was done on time and on budget… Post-project reviews give us the opportunity to evaluate many more factors.