6. Lessons learned

Taking time at the end of the change initiative to review how things went is often overlooked, however it is a vital step in developing a continuous improvement approach.  Ideally the initiative should be reviewed in two steps:

• A Lessons Learned Review at the end of the Deliver phase when the change team are still in place and issues are fresh in people’s minds.  This answers the question “what lessons did we learn that we can apply to future change initiatives?”
• A Post Implementation Review at the end of the Sustain phase when benefits have been realised.  This answers the question “did the initiative fully solve the problem it was designed to address?”

 For the Lessons Learned Review you should address the following questions:

• Did the initiative deliver what it set out to?
• Where budgets met? If not, why not?
• Was the schedule met? If not, why not?
• Were risks identified and mitigated? If not, why not?
• Did the change management methodology work? If not, why not?
• What could be done to improve the process?
• What bottlenecks or hurdles were experienced that impacted the initiative?
• What went well?
• What did not go well?
• What would we do differently?
• What procedures should be implemented in future change initiatives?

The Lessons Learned Review is typically undertaken as a workshop or series of workshops with the Change Leadership, Change Governance, Change Network and representatives of all impacted stakeholder groups.

The following aspects help achieve a successful outcome:

• Define the scope of the review – because of the number of people involved in a change initiative it is easy to hurt someone’s feeling when reviewing the lessons learned.  Clarify the objectives of the review so that people feel able to share their experiences openly and honestly.
• Review key documents – look back at the strategies and plans to review what actually happened against what was planned.
• Use appropriate data collection – as well as conducting workshops, you could use interviews and surveys to collect a wide range of views
• Consider using independent reviewers – to get an unbiased view of the project.  You still need to gather the views of those involved and impacted by the change so a useful approach is to use an independent person to facilitate a lessons learned workshop.

Tip:

• Ask for openness – emphasise the importance of being open and honest in their assessment and ensure that people aren’t in any way punished for being open. 
• Be objective –describe what happened in objective terms and focus on identifying improvements
• Be future focused – the purpose is to focus on the future not to assign blame for what happened in the past
• Look at both positives and negatives

A Lessons Learned Report documents the outcome of the Lessons Learned Review

This aspect of reviewing the initiative is focused on whether the change achieved the business ambitions, that is, did we do the right thing to address the business drivers?  It should also address the issue of whether the initiative delivered value for money – was the outcome ‘worth’ the change effort?

The Change Sponsor should commission a review of benefits and outcomes and the report should review the original business case and ask:

• Did the initiative meet its objectives?
• Do the new ways of working reflect the vision and future state definition for the initiative?
• Have all the agreed benefits been fully realised? If not, what actions are in place to address this?
• Could further changes been made which would deliver even more value?
• Are there any additional benefits that can be achieved?
• What were the final costs?  Where any additional costs incurred during the Sustain phase?
• Did the initiative deliver value for money?

A Post Implementation Review documents the outcome of the Post Implementation Review