More from the lessons learned survey

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Here is a selection of answers from the my lessons learned survey, to the question "What process do you use for lessons identification?"

Interesting, and heartening, to see the prevalance of group indentification processes such as AAR and various forms of Post Project Review. However a few organisations still rely on individual submissions, which I personally think is inefficient, as stated in this blog post.

Here's the list of methods used. Any spelling errors are the survey respondents'

After Action Reviews
After Action reviews during project activity
After action reviews during and following projects
After Action Review after project closure. Before During and After
After action reveiws at stage gates and ad hoc requirementsPost sales pitch reviews. After Action reviews during project activity
AAR, Project Stage gates assurance reviews, External benchmarking, project events (good and bad), retrospects
AARs during assignments (informal);
after action reviews, individual submission
After Action Reviews
Formal AAR,
AAR, Project evaluation, workshops
Developing AAR to improve the process.

Other post-project review
Learning From Projects - post implementation; RLI (Review Learn Improve) following reported assurance (safety, security, quality, environmental) incident.
A few via Project Reviews at the end of Projects
CVP process for major projects
Retrospect and/or interviews leading to key Beliefs
Post project reviews. Generally a lengthy meeting to specifically review process and capture lessons-learned. Recording of lesson-learned in a word document which relies on long-term follow-up to ensure application for subsequent projects.
Post project workshops + Intra-project PM collation + PMO Project auditing
After project review to gather the positive and negative experience that is then included in end of the project report
Post-project reviews (retrospects).
PPRs (formal).
Retrospect on request for major activities
Post (or milestone) debriefing of client projects; Formal process associated with project execution, and lessons can be submitted anytime.
Post-Mortem review meetings to assess each major release
After a project completes when team members are recapping activities and deliverables
Project team does a review and write up before it disbands (This could be the only thing between them and their next job)
Lessons learned are captured in the close project activity as a mean te get a check in the box for CMM assessment approval.
Review meetings held with project leaders, project workers and end users after each stage of the project. At times, a neutral facilitator to encourage submissions.

External reviews
External HSE system audit / inspection: especially to assess the statistics from the last lesson learned, in ordre to see the effectivness of the tracking-reporting system
External reviews of programmes
external reviews,

Individual submissions
individual submissions from my team which I have documented
Individual submission by site staff
Submission by the staff after the software release has concluded
Individual submissions by client facing staff.
individual submissions
the majority via individual submissions from inside AND outside the Organisation

Other
info exchange with partners
After a serious OHS incident eg potential fatality
Client feedback reviews.
on-line community discussion forums and ultimate wiki form completion
Different, sometimes prize competition (Marketing)
Project Board meetings usually last item on agenda
Template for project LL.
Constant review of processes thru metrics to discover if there are ways to improve
Well by well review raising concerns and discussing problems
Our lessons learned (called "Good Practices) are indentified during several, audit processes, as part of daily work, as part of our COP processes and part of our TPM implementation (continuous improvement programme)
we're a sales-oriented company, so all our metrics are sales based.