Project Alchemy Part Four: Conduct a Project 'Postmortem'

Project Alchemy Part Four: Conduct a Project 'Postmortem'

In Part Three of this series, I asked you to review your chain of failures for patterns and connections.  In this section, I want you to dive deep into your most recent failure, looking at all of the fine details and decision points that could have led to an undesirable outcome.

Businesses often conduct the postmortem of any recent project, positive or negative. They want to see what has gone right, of course, but they also want to see the points where they could have made a different decision to lead to even better results.

When conducting a project review like this there are a some specific guidelines to follow:

1. Bring together all your materials from the project. This means your chicken scratched notes on the back of napkins,  your checklists, your spreadsheets, emails you sent to team members and customers, everything.  Spread it all out in front of you in a big space and have a whiteboard handy for timelines, notes, and discoveries.  You want to be able to look at everything at once, from beginning to end, without skipping anything.

2. Don't rush it. Give yourself time to fully absorb all the different elements of your project. If this sounds intense, it is. The larger the project, the more time and energy you need to put into this process.  The more time you spend on it, the greater the returns will be.

3. Look at specific elements. There are some common areas where decision points can go for a ride.  One such area is in personnel.  Did you have the right people involved?  Did you have enough people involved?  Did they have the right roles, ones that were properly suited to them, and their individual talents and abilities?

Another common area where mistakes are made is in timing.  Did you allow yourself enough time to thoroughly plan and execute your project?  Did things occur in the right sequence, and with the right amount of time between them?  Were you exceptionally hard on yourself in any way?

Finally, were you doing the right things?  Sometimes you can have all the right people and all the right timing, all the right ingredients ... but your project simply doesn't fly.  It's akin to releasing a product your market just doesn't want. It can be beautiful, you can do it 'right', but it still fails.

4. Go beyond the easy answer.  It's human nature to want to find one reason that something didn't work, but it's rarely that simple.  There are usually a number of different factors that contributed to the success or failure of any venture.  Sure, some will be big and some will be small, but there is always more than one reason – and it's rarely the one you think of first.

5. Review your results with an objective listener.  After you finish the 'postmortem', it's important to go over your findings with someone who knows you, knows the project, but is still an objective observer (and listener).  You can present your findings to them, get their feedback, and review some of the action items you've discovered for your next project.  

This is critical to ensure that you haven't gone for the easy answer, and that you aren't overlooking anything.  A business coach or mentor is a great person to have involved at this stage, because they've been involved in similar processes before and will have some tried and true tools and methods for you to employ in your next project.

Please join me now for Part Five; Put An End to the 'Blame Game'.

*Here is where to find the Introduction and first two parts of this series.