Lessons Learned: High-quality projects in time & budget

A large German bank wanted to learn lessons for the future from a difficult project. The company was not able to reach a successful conclusion to an important project that involved three organisational areas. It wanted to identify the reasons for the failure and pinpoint areas for optimisation, and above all make sure that interaction between the areas would be positive and efficient in the future.

Two Lessons Learned workshops were held: First, a workshop with those involved from the IT department, and then a workshop with representatives from IT and two user departments. The tight timeframe and participant scepticism were particular challenges that needed to be overcome. IFOK first drew up a stakeholder analysis with internal bank advisers, and reconstructed the project progress from 2005 to 2008. A workshop concept was drawn up and clarified on the basis of the customer’s objectives. In the workshop phase, the aim was to support a dynamic group of experienced project managers and executives, work to achieve the workshop goals, address problems and annoyances in the project in an open and constructive way, and identify solutions. All participants provided excellent feedback for the Lessons Learned workshops and went away with concrete solutions, agreements, and next steps. The desire to work together was strengthened, and participants reached concrete agreements on how conflicts and risks should be dealt with efficiently in future large projects.
By systematically implementing the lessons learned, the objectives were achieved:

• Positive and critical aspects of the project were defined jointly by the project stakeholders
• Action areas particularly critical to project success were defined and concrete improvements specified for them
• The foundations were laid for constructive, cross-area collaboration in projects and the holding of further Lessons Learned workshops