Learning from the past – how to assess project failures and learn from them

Past experiences can teach us valuable lessons so here we take a quick look at how to assess project failures so we can improve our project management skills in the future. If you don’t assess project failures and learn from the mistakes of the past, then you’re destined to repeat those same mistakes again and again.

Whether you have taken training courses or learnt on the job, life in project management – just as in any other role – is all about learning skills and using those skills to improve project outcomes. And one key way to improve outcomes is to build on the knowledge and experiences of the past to improve the future. That’s true whatever career journey you take in life.

How do you assess your failures?

When it comes to project failures, see them as an opportunity to look at where you went wrong and consider what you could have done differently. Failure is not always a bad thing; learning from failure is what can make you a better project manager. For anyone doubting that I’d highly recommend the book “Black Box Thinking” by Matthew Syed.

To effectively assess project failures, you need to consider the potential causes. Here are just 3 to get you started (though a realistic list is bound to be much longer):

• Making rushed decisions without thinking through the consequences
• Setting unachievable timelines for the project
• Lack of communication at vital moments

How do you learn from your mistakes?

One of the skills required by project managers is the ability to step back and assess your performance honestly and openly. You should make this process transparent and be fully accountable.

This is usually done by following the same standard process:

1. Establish your goals and objectives, the success
   measures you will use, the baseline and the approach
2. Overcome those obstacles that may be in the way
   of truly learning lessons such as fear and blame
3. Review your performance and document your
   failures and successes
4. Analyse what they might have occurred to derail a project
5. Consider what you can do about the causes
6. Do what is necessary
7. Evaluate any results
8. Repeat

It is highly important to avoid the “blame game”. This will ultimately achieve nothing. Instead, honestly confront any poor performance that has occurred, whether from you, as the project manager, your team, stakeholders, suppliers and (yes, even) senior management. Only then can you openly analyse the mistakes and determine how to move forwards – if not on the current project, then on the next.

Now is the time when those all-important communication skills need to come into play. Communication is the essential tool that will help you to pick apart what went wrong, how it went wrong and what you can take away from the experience so that you can avoid it happening in the future.