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technology department—understand the language and practices of “the
business community” by publishing a “black book”:
We have the IT department of like, at the time, 300 people. And we
had a business community that was suspicious of the IT department’s
understanding of the business and how it actually functions and how it
actually makes money. That suspicion led to a credibility issue. So there
was a chasm between what technology could enable for the business
community and what the business community thought technology
could enable for them. So to address that chasm, we said, “You know
what? Maybe IT doesn’t understand the business. Let’s write a book
about the business and give it out to everybody in IT.” And the code
name for the book was called the Black Book. And it was the who,
what, where, when of how we make money.
Boundary Practices
All participants stated that they had established processes that are com-
mon to multiple projects—including lessons- learned practices, project
methodologies, and status reporting and governance processes—that
bring opportunities for learning to the surface and provide a vehicle for
transferring lessons learned to current and future projects.
Lessons- Learned Practices. Lessons- learned practices were the most com-
mon boundary practice that brought opportunities for learning to the sur-
face. The great majority of the participants (85 percent) reported that they
or their company require project teams to conduct lessons- learned ses-
sions upon project closure, resulting in a “lessons- learned document.” The
purpose of the lessons- learned sessions was to encourage team members
to re ect on their past project experiences in order to identify opportuni-
ties for improvement on future projects. Robert described how lessons
learned were required by his PMO after projects were completed:
And as a PMO, we insist upon a lessons learned or a postmortem after
every project. About two weeks after every project, there has to be a
lessons learned, a postmortem. We follow a fairly standard template,
pretty robust. It’s not a witch hunt. It’s a, “What went well? What could
have gone better?”
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Robert also described how he required project managers who were
participating in lessons- learned sessions to seek out others who might
bene t from the resulting knowledge:
Anything that we can take from that and immediately apply to other
projects, one or more other projects, the project manager usually con-
tacts the other gaining project manager, if you will. The one that’s
gaining the knowledge from this lessons learned and says, “Hey, be on
the lookout for something like this. It hasn’t happened in a while, but
it just happened on my project.”
In answering a question in the project manager focus group about how
PMOs help project teams learn from past project experiences, one project
manager con rmed the existence of lessons- learned practices in her en-
vironment, saying, “One of the processes that we put in place at my last
company was that [a lessons- learned document] was a required deliverable
before you could exit a project.”
Status Reporting and Governance. The great majority of the PMO leaders
(85 percent) have established status reporting and project governance prac-
tices that bring opportunities for learning from past project experiences to
the surface. Rachel explained her PMO’s approach to status reporting and
its focus on uncovering problem areas that might have emerged over the
course of a project’s life cycle:
That takes us right back to those project updates. In terms of, once a
month, formally the project managers are reporting out along a lot
of di erent areas. Actually one point I want to make is, over the year,
we’ve also re ned what they’re reporting out on so that it’s not just a
red- amber- green rating on the overall project. But we’ve asked for more
granularity. Maybe the overall project is amber, but where are you green?
Where are you red? Where are you yellow? Is it around nancials? Con-
trols? Project planning? Resource management? You know, so forth, and
so on. So that’s another lessons learned, not just to broad sweep a project
red, yellow, or green, but in fact try to focus in on the root cause.
Sarah described a jolting experience resulting from a senior executive’s
“no- go” decision caused by a project governance checkpoint, an event that
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spurred e orts to re ect on the reasons why the mission- critical project
had faltered:
I found out through a report from the project manager and the head of
the London o ce, to say that the key deliverable for that phase with a
“go/no- go” had been called a “no- go.” Then there was a plea for help,
which is, “What do we do?”—You know, “This calls into question ev-
erything now. Our plans, our resources. What are we going to do?” So
that’s how I found out.
Cathy described how she is moving toward establishing a more formal
governance process that involves senior decision makers, ensuring align-
ment between business priorities and project management:
What we’re trying to do right now is we’re putting in a set of gates. So
that you have to pass through certain gates, which will be certain evalu-
ations. We do this now informally, and a lot of the projects go through
this, but we’re trying to make it so that they all go through this and no
one bypasses it because we really want to have everything aligned with
the business objectives, and we want to make sure that there are other
VPs, especially on the business side, who are aware of what’s being
requested and are aware of what’s going on.
In response to the nding that PMO project governance triggers learn-
ing opportunities, as in Sarah’s and Cathy’s situations, one of the project
managers said the following in the project manager focus group:
Well, I think who you’re presenting to . . . the members of the steering
committee often have good questions or key points that help to re ect
a little bit more on how the project is being conducted. I mean, it’s not
the best place to learn but . . . it happens. (Project Manager 3)
In a discussion of the ways in which PMO leaders transfer learning in
the summative focus group, Rachel con rmed the role that status report-
ing and governance can play:
You know, we use the tollgate concept, where basically you have to
present certain documents, so you can get through the tollgate and
that helps [to ensure learning is transferred to future projects].
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Project Methodologies. Project methodologies were clearly the most com-
mon boundary practice that made past learning available to future proj-
ects. Most participants (80 percent) had established guidelines for project
managers that outline requirements, standards, or guidelines for manag-
ing project work that were intended to incorporate lessons from past proj-
ect experiences. Mitch described how his rm has incorporated improve-
ments into its project methodology based on past project experiences:
The other piece is that, you know, where we have learned clearly from
the past, and brought forward into future projects are things like a—
more of the acceptance criteria for our vendors. In other words, there
are some acceptance criteria that we have written from our vendors
when they hand us something. “Okay, we’re not going to take it un-
less you have this, this, and this done.” So those are things that we
have learned, as we’ve moved forward and brought into future projects
what we’ve done.
Rachel talked about another example of incorporating previous learn-
ing into a project methodology:
Another area of lessons learned is having a documented communi-
cations plan, change management plans. So you know, all the good
practices, but just making them more and more—I don’t like using the
word “formal”—but more and more expected. As part of your role as
a PM, you have to have these things in place.
Knowledge- Sharing Forums. Half the PMO leaders (50 percent) reported
that they had established knowledge- sharing sessions at which project
managers or PMO sta share lessons learned, providing others with an
opportunity to learn from their experiences. Wendy described one such
example of an informal face- to- face knowledge- sharing session where
project managers got together for lunch:
Every month, I sponsor the “Lunch and Learn,” where I have like all
30 employees and consultants in the tank, and that’s where I’d get an
hour and a half with them. And in there, we would talk about lessons
learned as well. We have a chance for the PM to say what’s working
well and what is not working well.
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Patty discussed another example of face- to- face knowledge sharing
where her sta members, consisting of project “liaisons” that maintain
connections with project managers and project teams, meet to discuss
current issues and identify learning opportunities:
The members of the PMO have weekly team meetings. Through those
weekly team meetings, we will do liaison updates that help to promote
and identify things that are happening out there, as real time as pos-
sible, that will be headline- worthy, newsworthy, action- oriented for the
PMO as a whole, or to further equip or better equip our PMO liaisons
in the liaison role. So we really kind of do this as an iterative process
all the time, depending on what the real- life issues or things are. So the
PMO, in a way, doesn’t wait every year for the lessons- learned activity
at a formal level to occur before we identify opportunities to address
things as we see them.
One of the project managers in the project manager focus group talked
about his experience with knowledge- sharing forums in which very speci c
lessons learned were selected and discussed among project man agers:
Another thing is, like we have, what do you call it? A monthly meeting,
all heads meet to do the Project of the Month. . . . So basically what we
do is we pick up something special about a project. . . . We pick up a
very speci c situation. Okay, we reached a problem, a typical problem
situation within the scope of the program. . . . We concentrate on that
pertinent piece [versus] the whole project because we have realized
that we do not get that kind of attention when you’re talking about
the whole project. (Project Manager 1)
Boundary Objects
All the participants reported using tools and templates, systems, or docu-
ments that provide a means of incorporating learning from past project
experiences into future projects.
Tools and templates were utilized by 85 percent of participants to share
and transfer learning from past project experiences. Wendy described how
she and her team developed a standard template and re ned it as they
learned more over the course of their project experiences:
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