Project Planning and Execution

Scenario:
Use your acquired knowledge, skills and insights in order to improve the project management practices by preparing a “Project Management Lessons Learned Brief”.
The Project Management Lessons Learned Brief will examine a past project of your choice (e.g. a past project you were involved in, or a past third party project for which you can access information) and evaluate its performance against a set of established parameters, i.e. project goals and objectives, contributions towards company strategy, methodology used, triple constraint analysis, etc.
The aim of this document is to identify the project management practices and outcomes, which have led to project success/failure, and most importantly, identify areas for improvement in the form of concrete recommendations.
Your work must include a critical analysis into the project management methodology used, highlighting areas for improvement or modification, taking into account suitable and relevant developments within the PM discipline.
Be sure to differentiate between ‘symptoms’ and ‘causes’ when preparing your brief. Tip: using root-cause analysis tools may be useful to derive analytical insights.
Additionally, a set of concise action points must be mentioned on how these issues will be tackled, by whom, when, and how will improvement/progress will be measured and tracked.
You are encouraged to make use of charts, graphs, diagrams, tables and other word-efficient means of presenting information; so as to ensure that the message is effectively communicated, thus increasing the chances that your recommendations are acted upon.
Assessment Guidance Tips
• Read the assessment carefully!
• Working on your selected project
o Identify project’s original targets: budget, schedule, scope, etc.
o Compare actual vs planned results
o Identify any discrepancies
o Analyse reasons for discrepancies BOTH failures and success
o Consolidate into a professional, well-structured Lessons Learned Report
Suggested Structure
• Project overview
• Lessons learned*
o Category & issue
o Project problem/success
o Impact
o Improvement recommendations
• Conclusion
• References