Letza simple anatomy lessons

Terry Williams, PhD, PMP

ISBN 13: 978-1-933890-24-1 ISBN 10: 1-933890-24-X

Published by: Project Management Institute, Inc. 14 Campus Boulevard Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073-3299 USA Phone: +1-610-356-4600 Fax: +1-610-356-4647 E-mail: customercare@pmi.org Internet: www.PMI.org

©2007 Project Management Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.

“PMI”, the PMI logo, “PMP”, the PMP logo, “PMBOK”, “PgMP”, “Project Management Journal”, “PM Network”, and the PMI Today logo are registered marks of Project Management Institute, Inc. The Quarter Globe Design is a trademark of the Project Management Institute, Inc. For a comprehensive list of PMI marks, contact the PMI Legal Department.

PMI Publications welcomes corrections and comments on its books. Please feel free to send comments on typographical, formatting, or other errors. Simply make a copy of the relevant page of the book, mark the error, and send it to: Book Editor, PMI Publications, 14 Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, PA 19073-3299 USA.

To inquire about discounts for resale or educational purposes, please contact the PMI Book Service Center:

PMI Book Service Center P.O. Box 932683, Atlanta, GA 31193-2683 USA Phone: 1-866-276-4764 (within the U.S. or Canada) or +1-770-280-4129 (globally) Fax: +1-770-280-4113 E-mail: info@bookorders.pmi.org

Printed in the United States of America. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, manual, photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48—1984).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4

CONTENTS

1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Introduction 1

2 LITERATURE SURVEY 5

2.1 Introduction 5

2.2 Motivation 8

2.3 Concepts 13

2.4 The Current Situation 27

2.5 Creating Knowledge 30

2.6 Transferring Knowledge 42

2.7 Case Studies 56

2.8 Conclusions 57

3 SURVEY OF PRACTICE: DO ORGANIZATIONS LEARN FROM PROJECTS? 61

3.1 Introduction 61

3.2 Profi le of Respondents 62

3.3 What Are Organizations Doing? 64

3.4 How Successful Are these Processes? 71

3.5 Factors Contributing to the Perceived

Success of Lessons Learned 74

3.6 What Do You Think Is Best Practice? 81

3.7 Conclusions 86

4 INTERVIEWS: DO ORGANIZATIONS LEARN FROM PROJECTS? 89

4.1 Introduction 89

4.2 Organization C 90

4.3 Organization G 93

4.4 Organization P 94

4.5 Additional Case Studies 97

4.6 Organization W 98

4.7 Organization L 100

4.8 Organization S 102

5 CASE STUDY IN PRACTICE 105

5.1 Background 105

5.2 Interviews of Project Participants 105

5.3 Conclusion 107

6 CONCLUSIONS 109

APPENDIX 1: THE ZOOMERANG SURVEY 111

APPENDIX 2: THE ZOOMERANG RESULTS 123

APPENDIX 3 133

REFERENCES 135

1

1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

The need to manage projects well, and to learn from one project to the next, is of vital importance as our world becomes more and more project-based. Our management of complex projects is often seen as less effective than it might be, and consequently, we do need to learn from one project to the next. This is a well-known theory (Collison and Parcell 2001; Kerzner 2000)—but in practice, projects are often not reviewed at all for various reasons (Williams et al. 2001) If they are reviewed, the methods don’t account for the complexity or try to explain causality, so there is no understanding about what went wrong (or right) and why (MacMaster 2000). So with a few exceptions, it appears that project reviews are infrequently performed and useful lessons are not captured. If we did gain lessons, these need to be incorporated into the processes and policies of our organizations; a “lessons learned” process needs to be implemented and then refl ected upon to produce double-loop learning. The need to consider what is best practice in reviewing projects is evident.

At the end of 2004, while working at Strathclyde University, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, I responded to a request for research proposals from the Project Management Institute (PMI®), Newtown Square, PA, USA, with a proposal to look into post-project reviews, and PMI awarded me a research grant. In the middle of the contract, I moved to Southampton University, UK (also Concertante Consulting, London, UK) and the work was completed there.