The Lessons Learned Handbook

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My new book has been published at last.

This is "The Lessons learned handbook", available here.

The publishers blurb is as follows -

This book is a practitioner-level guide to the design and the mechanics of lessons learned processes. It takes a holistic approach, tracking lessons from identification to reapplication, makes the case for the assignment of actions for learning, and is grounded on successful applications in industry and military

The phrase “lessons learned” is such a common one, yet people struggle with developing effective lessons learned approaches. The Lessons Learned Handbook is written for the project manager, quality manager or senior manager trying to put in place a system for learning from experience, or looking to improve the system they have. The book is based on experience of successful and unsuccessful systems, and recognises the need to convert learning into action. For this to happen, there needs to be a series of key steps, and this book aims to guide the reader through these steps. The aim of the book is to provide a complete set of practical guidance to learning from experience, illustrated with case histories from the author, and from contributors from industry and the public sector.

Unfortunately I didnt get the top-class military case study I was hoping for (the guys were too busy to write it, and I can sympathise!), but there are some great stories and examples in there from industry.

You can find some snippets of the material covered in the book in these blog posts, which will give you a rough flavour of some of the content

The 3 steps of the lessons learned loop
100 ways to wreck organisational lesson-learning
More detail from the lessons survey


I hope you like it!