American Management Association 15
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Projects are the vehicle for transforming the modern global corporation.
They are the means by which businesses achieve leaner cost structures,
more e ective operations, and better IT. They are the means by which
companies develop new products and execute new business strategies.
When projects succeed, they deliver revenue growth, improved productiv-
ity, lower costs, more e cient operations, and higher market valuations.
When they fail, they drain critical investment dollars, waste valuable re-
sources, and—directly or indirectly—limit a rm’s ability to compete.
While projects are vital to organizational growth, renewal, and suc-
cess, project work is fraught with uncertainty, risk, and ever- changing
internal and external conditions. Every project and each phase of every
project presents new problems and challenges that require managers and
teams to plan, act, and adjust. Organizational priorities may change as
new managers rotate into and out of roles. External economic conditions
may change, making some projects more urgent and eliminating the need
for others altogether. Requirements for new products or software applica-
tions may change in midstream as customers and stakeholders learn more
about what they really need. Mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, joint
ventures, and new strategic initiatives create discontinuities and place new
demands on the organization and its top talent, drawing away resources at
critical times (Dai, 2002).
In addition to navigating a changing social and political landscape,
people at all levels must increasingly learn to work with new people, new
technologies, and new business processes across di erent time zones, cul-
1 THE NEED FOR
MULTI-LEVEL
LEARNING
16 Foundations
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tures, and functional disciplines as work becomes more geographically
distributed.
Not only do project organizations face the challenge of changing inter-
nal and external conditions, but they are under pressure to continually im-
prove performance, increase productivity, reduce costs, and trim timelines
from one phase of a project to the next and from one project to the next.
This is especially true for organizations that generate revenue solely from
the delivery of projects and programs to external customers, such as those
rms in the outsourcing, consulting, engineering, software development,
and construction industries. However, it is increasingly true for internal
groups such as information technology, product development, research
and development, marketing, and operations.
The problem is that for many project organizations, systematic learn-
ing primarily happens either after a project is concluded or after major
problems have occurred, when the damage has already been done. Take,
for example, the experience of a major high- tech medical device manu-
facturer. The company lost millions on a massive project that required
multiple business units to coordinate their e orts for a single customer
installation. Time delays, rework, cost overruns, and contractual penalties
ultimately combined to produce a monumental failure that the company’s
executives wanted explained and remedied. Ed, the leader of the project
management o ce (PMO), launched a postproject review and asked the
team to develop a case study with recommendations for future projects. A
few days later, the PMO received a call from someone in sales: “Ed, we’ve
got a project that’s going o the rails over here. We need your help.” Ed
realized that the project she was talking about had all the hallmarks of
the previous failure. Within 24 hours, the management team put the case
study recommendations into action and avoided millions more in poten-
tial cost overruns and penalties.
There is good news and bad news in this story. The good news is that
the organization found that performing a project retrospective (also often
called a postproject review, project postmortem, or after- action review)
had tremendous value. Performing the retrospective and documenting the
results through a case study probably saved the company millions more
in future project failures. After all, projects often share the same orga-
nizational environment, including common tools, people, and processes.
This means that improvements on one project can improve other projects,
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