What is Lessons learned?
Lessons learned: Notes on what worked and what did not.
Where Lessons learned fits
Lessons learned is part of Control & Review in Project Management. Control compares plan with reality: variance, slack, status reports, change requests and risk registers. At the end, run a retrospective.
Practical tip
Route changes through a formal request and capture lessons learned.
Related terms
- Scope creep
- Uncontrolled growth of a project's requirements.
- Retrospective
- A team review of what went well and what to improve.
- Contingency plan
- A backup plan in case something goes wrong.
- Agile
- Working in short cycles, learning and adjusting often.
- Risk management
- Finding, ranking and reducing threats to a business.
- Risk register
- A list of project risks with their likelihood, impact and owner.
- Variance
- The gap between planned and actual results.
- Slack
- How long a task can slip without delaying the project.
Formulas you will use with it
Test yourself
Which term means: “Notes on what worked and what did not.”?
Scope creep · Lessons learned · Slack
Answer: Lessons learned
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