Post Project review is a process to evaluate whether the objectives of the project have been met and how effective the project is managed. This helps to avoid making similar mistakes with future projects and learning how to run the project better. In this blog we will address following questions.

• Are Project Post Reviews good and do they bring any value in teams to deliver the next project better?
• How Project reviews are carried out?

Project Post Reviews

After the completion of one project or completing the deliverables, many teams rush from one project to the next without taking the time to learn from the experiences they have just been through. This fails to assess if the project was a general success or failure and whether the benefits have been realized. Mostly organizations are unable to tell the reason of their project failure.  During the project implementation phase, the teams need to understand where they are they are currently succeeding and where they are going wrong. Project reviews can help us to assemble this information and proactively react according to the analyzed situation. They help to improve company processes, team working patterns and behavior. Post project reviews are not meant to fail someone progress but to learn from the mistakes. These reviews should not create hurt feelings which later brings some unpleasant political issues within your team or organization. Therefore, be clear that what you’re interested in is not a personal attack, but a systemic overview of process and how everyone together can work towards improving it. That’s why it often helps to hire an independent party to collect the post-project data.

Ways to carry out Project Review

One way of carrying out a post implementation review (PIR) is to get the team together and take their opinion about positive points and then enlist the the areas where they feel they can improve.

Here are some of the best practices for conducting the review include the following.

• Trust. Trust is important. Tell your team that you want openness without fear of retribution. The more critical and truthful their observations about the project are, the more successful the review.
• Fairness. While you want honesty, you don’t want to deal with interpersonal issues with bad feelings or to settle old scores
• Documentation. Like all project management, all the activities needs to be analysed to bring the best in the next project.
• Retrospection. As you develop a storyline and observe the issue that have worked and which seems to be not worked. This observation vision can help the team to look forward towards new projects.
• Improvement. This is not about laying blame but about identifying more effective ways of working for the next project.

Reference:

What is Post-Implementation Review in Project Management?