PRINCE27 Lessons Log and Lessons Report
PRINCE2 7 Lessons log
A lesson is information that facilitates the future of the project or other projects and actively promotes learning from experience. The experience may be positive, as in a successful test or outcome, or negative, as in a mishap or failure.
The purpose of the lessons log is to provide a repository to record lessons that apply to this project or future projects.
Some lessons may originate from other projects and should be captured on the lessons log for input to the project’s approaches and plans.
Some lessons may originate from within the project, where new experiences (both good and bad) can be applied to this project and passed on to others. Lessons are documented information that reflects a project’s positive and negative experiences.
Lessons can be captured during a post-project review during any meetings, throughout the project (you do not have to wait until a post-project review to share lessons), via PRINCE2 management products like checkpoint reports or highlight reports by performing retrospectives when issues occur during stakeholder one-to-one meetings using electronic workspaces where data and information are shared.
Lessons Log content:
High-level content
Lesson identifier: unique reference for the lesson
Lesson description: a summary of the lesson and associated details, for example, the effect (such as positive/negative financial impact), known cause/trigger, whether there were any early warning indicators, whether it was previously identified as a risk (threat or opportunity), recommendations
Lesson type: for example, team lesson, project lesson, business layer lesson
Lesson owner: who is responsible for actioning any learning from the lesson (could be from a team, the project, or the business)
Grading: a rating of priority and severity
Status: the current status of the lesson, for example, logged, reviewed, learning actioned (by project), learning actioned (by business)
Relevant dates related to the lesson: for example, date raised, date last reviewed, action due dates, and date resolved.
Records: A list of the documents associated with the issue and their location.
Record lessons during a project to suit the organization, project team, and other existing and future projects.
The lessons log is part of the project log.
Project log Purpose
The project log captures the continually changing records of issues, lessons, products, quality, risk, and other informal actions or events.
The project log is dynamic in containing the current and historical record of project activities and progress. It includes a lessons learned log, which captures lessons and is accessed when reviewing progress.
The Project Log contents
Project logs and registers:
issue register
lessons log
product register
quality register
risk register
High-level content
daily log of other information actions and events.
Common data for each log entry:
unique identifier
date logged
logged by
date updated
status
classification (where needed)
details.
The Lessons Report
Purpose of a Lessons Report The purpose of a lessons report is to share lessons and trigger actions to ensure that lessons become embedded in the appropriate organization’s work.
A lesson report can be created at any point in a project and should be completed on time. It is typically included as part of the end-stage report or end-project report.
It may be appropriate (and necessary) that several lesson reports are specific to a particular organization (for example, user, supplier, or business).
Executive summary: a summary of the lesson Description for work package, stage, or project lessons:
A review of what went well, what went poorly, and recommendations for this project or future projects
Description for a specific lesson: the effect (for example, positive/negative financial impact), cause/ trigger if known/proven, whether there were any early warning indicators, whether it was previously identified as a risk (threat or opportunity), recommendations for this project or future projects.
What did we expect to occur? What happened?
The analysis of a lesson should answer five questions in the following order: what worked well and why? What did not work and why? What needs to be done differently, or what needs to be repeated?
Progress Document management systems or team collaboration systems are valuable tools for sharing and reporting knowledge from lessons. It should be noted that systems and data play a significant part in reviewing progress.
Any reports, registers, or logs mentioned above may originate from a system where the data is integrated and accessible. This would follow the digital and data management approach and be presented electronically with drill-down capabilities to access more detail.
Executive summary: a summary of the lesson Description for the work package, stage, or project lessons: a review of what went well, what went poorly, and recommendations for this project or future projects Description for a specific lesson: the effect (for example, positive/negative financial impact), cause/ trigger if known/proven, whether there were any early warning indicators, whether it was previously identified as a risk (threat or opportunity), recommendations for this project or future projects
A lesson report can take several formats, including:
an oral report to the target audience (which could be in person or by phone)
a presentation at a lessons review or progress review (via physical meeting, conference call, web conference)
These can include a document or email sent to the target audience, a dashboard, or an entry in a project management tool or system.
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