Project Management Mistakes – How To Learn From These Mistakes

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An integral part of close project process is documentation of lessons learned, which later on becomes historical information. These documents are helpful to other project managers and teams later on. The lessons learned document includes the root cause of problems, cause of corrective actions, corrective and preventive actions, their outcomes, any unplanned risks occurred, mistakes made that could have been avoided, and other important details related to the project. The documentation of both successful and failed projects must be done, as this information can be helpful for future reference. Some project managers, however, do not document lessons learned and want to hide their mistakes made during the project. An experienced project manager would never hide any information which might be very helpful for other managers and team members of his organization.

Go through the lessons learned of previous project

Before starting a new project, a project manager must go through the Organizational Process Assets of the related projects. This can help the manager to prevent the same mistakes done by others in past. It is recommended to review this data really carefully as there is a possibility that the issue occurred in past may not occur in current scenario due to updated technology or other changes.

Learn from your own mistakes

If you list down all the mistakes done by you or your team in a timely manner, the probability of repetition of these mistakes again become very low. Because when you are documenting everything, you are actually revising it, so now you would not do it the third time.

Learn from Others’ mistakes

Smart people learns from their mistakes but those who learn from others’ are smarter. Today in the world of tough competition, you cannot afford to do a large number of mistakes and then learn from them, you do not have enough time for it.  The best way to learn from others is by observation. A good project manager must always be active. He should spend some time with his peers and mentors to learn what else is going on in the organization. The other way is face to face meeting with someone who you think has probably been through the same situation some point in the past. You might find that they can give you good ideas and suggestions you require. Even if you don’t find the solution, you would know one more incorrect way to deal with the situation and you could save your time by not trying it. No one is perfect even highly experienced project managers also commit mistakes and need to look for reassurance from time to time.

Multi-task carefully

The primary reasons of most of the small but critical mistakes is multi-tasking. It has been observed that whenever anyone tries to do two or more task simultaneously, the chances of mistake in one or all the task increases. Some examples – you are documenting and attending a con-call at the same time, you are attending a team meeting and checking your emails, you are making a presentation and chatting with your manager or a key-stakeholder, and so on. Some people are very good in multi-tasking but if you are not among them, please try to avoid it.

Always try for improvement and better results

Work on improving your results and try to beat your own record by improving in every new assignment you get.  This attitude would help you focus on improving not only in your assignment but in other aspects of your life and career.

One must document the takeaways from his current project to help others with better ways to deliver even more successful projects in future. So it is highly recommended not skip this step.At the same time it is important that the top management should work to create an atmosphere of trust and assurance that lessons learned are not reasons for demotivating employees but are learning opportunities that benefit all those associated with the project.

About Aditi Malhotra

Aditi Malhotra is the Content Marketing Manager at Whizlabs. Having a Master in Journalism and Mass Communication, she helps businesses stop playing around with Content Marketing and start seeing tangible ROI. A writer by day and a reader by night, she is a fine blend of both reality and fantasy. Apart from her professional commitments, she is also endearing to publish a book authored by her very soon.

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