Projects and products often encounter setbacks and failures. Project managers frequently take on the role of firefighters — once a problem is resolved, the team moves on. While this approach might work in the moment, every issue presents an opportunity to learn and improve for the future.
If your company has more than one project or product manager, each of them likely has valuable insights to share. These might include effective planning tools or a list of challenges from a recent project.
It’s important to share this knowledge across the team so that future products and projects can benefit from past experience and avoid repeating common issues — which tend to occur in 90% of cases if left unaddressed.
If your organization has a project or product management office, collecting lessons learned is typically its responsibility. If there’s no formal process yet, consider taking the initiative to start one yourself.
What Is “Lessons Learned”?
It’s a knowledge-sharing process within a project or product office (if one exists) or simply within your team. It involves:
- Compiling a list of problems encountered and resolved
- Collecting ideas for how to prevent or detect them earlier
- Sharing this information with the team during a dedicated meeting
The documented lessons can be stored in a shared knowledge base (such as Confluence, Notion, or similar), accessible to everyone. Future managers working on similar initiatives — using the same contractors or collaborating with the same teams — will be able to refer to these documents.
Sharing lessons learned between teams is a powerful way to prevent recurring mistakes.
What Lessons Can Be Shared?
- Failures and their root causes
Your team knows what went wrong. It’s important to analyze why it happened and at what stage things broke down. As a manager, you can step back and see the full picture to identify problem areas. - Best practices that proved useful
For instance, in my last feature, running an extra round of pre-testing helped us catch critical bugs early and saved valuable time. If we had found them during the final review, we wouldn’t have been able to meet the release deadline. This step was added as a recommendation for similar features going forward. - Suggestions for adjusting standard processes in special cases
This could include planning additional project buffers or introducing a new approval layer for proposed changes. Anything that can make your life easier or prevent issues from arising is worth documenting. - Obvious things that aren’t written anywhere
A simple reminder to check team members’ vacation schedules before the project begins can save a lot of trouble — even if it feels basic. - Previously documented information that was hard to find
Found a helpful guide buried in the wrong folder? Share the link and move it to the right place so others can find it when needed.
How to Gather and Use Lessons Learned
- Analyze the project and ask your team to do the same. You can use a survey or ask for free-form feedback. For larger projects, it’s best to do this regularly while memories are still fresh.
- Schedule a dedicated meeting for discussion and choose a facilitator (this doesn’t have to be the project or product manager — in fact, it’s sometimes better if it’s not, to avoid bias or pressure). Prepare a shared space where everyone can review the collected input.
- Hold the meeting, preferably in a retrospective format. Focus on answering three questions:
- What went well?
- What went wrong?
- What should we improve?
- Document the outcomes and share them with the team. The document should summarize key insights from the meeting, include the list of lessons learned, and provide detailed recommendations.
- Refer to the document in future phases of the project.
- Choose a central location to store the document. It should be easy for any team member to find without requiring extra permissions. If necessary, update existing documentation so that your insights and advice are included alongside it.
- When launching a new project, consult the knowledge base to find similar cases and review their lessons learned.
