Page 303 - Project+

You have created a lot of documents over the course of your project, particularly in the

Planning phase. The purpose for archiving those documents is twofold. First, it’s to
show you have completed the work of the project and that you can produce sign-offs,
and other legal documents, should the need arise. The second primary benefit of
archiving the project documentation is that it can be used to help you or other project
managers on future projects. Your planning documents can be a reference for cost and

time estimates or used as templates for planning similar projects in the future.
Check with your project management office (PMO) to determine whether they have a

centralized project archive such as an intranet site or wiki pages for the project
documents. They will tell you what the guidelines are for documentation and how to
file, organize, and store it.

If you don’t have a PMO, you’ll need to create your own archiving solution. Check with
your organization regarding standards compliance and document retention policies.
For example, the organization may require all documents to be numbered or named in

a certain fashion. Part of your archiving process will include the retention period. Your
organization may have guidelines regarding when certain types of documents can be
destroyed or what information must be retained. There are also laws regarding
retaining some types of documents, so make certain you are familiar with them when
creating your archiving site.

Documenting Lessons Learned

A lessons learned review session should be conducted at the conclusion of the project
or shortly thereafter. The size and complexity of the project will help you decide
whether you need to hold one or more review meetings. You’ll want to include any key
project team members, the project sponsor, and the key stakeholders at a minimum.

The purpose for this review is to assess the good and the not-so-good aspects of the
project. During this meeting, you’ll evaluate each phase of the project in order to
determine the things that went right and the things that could be improved.

Documenting lessons learned gives you the opportunity to improve the
overall quality of your project management processes on the next project and
benefits projects currently underway.

Lessons learned describe the successes and failures of the project. As an example,
lessons learned document the reasons why specific corrective actions were taken, their
outcomes, the causes of performance variances, unplanned risks that occurred,

mistakes that were made and could have been avoided, and so on.
Lessons learned help you assess what went wrong and why, not so you can point

fingers at the guilty parties, but so that you can improve performance on the next
project by avoiding the pitfalls you encountered on this one. It also helps you

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