The OTR GroupMost project teams promise to learn from the last project. Fewer write the lessons down in a form that someone else can use. A published government report on project initiation shows one way to do it properly, and the method is useful even if your projects are much smaller.
What the report is
The publication is a lessons-learned report on setting up major Defence projects. According to GOV.UK, it aims to capture validated lessons from past projects so that they can inform future work, and to help improve future project delivery by embedding the lessons into the system going forward. It turns interview findings into an impact-assessed list of success criteria for project initiation.
How the lessons were gathered
The report was produced after interviews with 12 Senior Responsible Owners and Project Directors from five Defence projects. Workshops were then held to test the findings. It was published on 14 June 2021. That two-step approach, interviews first and testing afterwards, is the part most worth copying: a lesson that has been challenged by other people is more reliable than one remembered by a single person.
How the report is organised
The page describes the contents as a foreword and executive summary, the main lessons grouped into themes, a methodology section, a bibliography and acknowledgements. Within each theme, the lesson comes with an explanation, practical suggestions for applying it, and quotes from interviewees. That structure makes each lesson easy to act on, because the reader gets the idea and a next step together.
"Initiation can happen multiple times"
One line in the report deserves attention: initiation can happen multiple times. Lessons about starting a project may therefore apply at several points in its life, such as after a major change in direction, leadership or team size. For a small team, that is a helpful reminder that a restart after a big change is a good moment to ask the starting questions again.
Borrowing the idea for your own projects
The following suggestions are ours, not the report's. They simply apply its method on a smaller scale.
- Interview the people who ran the last project, not only those who attended the final meeting.
- Test what you hear in a short workshop before writing it up as a lesson.
- Group lessons into a small number of themes so they are easy to remember.
- For each lesson, write down one practical action and who owns it.
- Revisit the list when the team, leadership or direction changes.
A note on scope
The report concerns Defence projects, and it does not set out a general rule for when lessons-learned reports must be written. Treat it as a well-documented example of method rather than a template for every organisation. The core habit is simple: gather lessons from the people involved, check them with others, and make each one actionable.