I’d love to see every PM group have a story bank that is constantly referenced, updated and discussed to inculcate these lessons learned.

If you want to learn any more about Cynthia’s project, you should check out http://www.rakontu.org/

regards, John

At the same time, you mention that even in these projects there are areas where mistakes are made again and again. I’d contend that these are the “complex” bits of the project–the ones where humans insert themselves the most and where there human interactions are most unpredictable. Requirements gathering is one you point out. These human errors are not ones that best practice can deal with very well.

One method of improving and learning in the complex context is to gather stories, look for patterns, and make changes based on what the patterns reveal. These can be mistake stories or success stories (or just “this happened and then this happened” stories). Systematically gathering the stories at the end of each project, making sense of them, then applying those lessons to the next project, over and over again, can help work through even those stubborn repeated mistakes.

I’m talking to an organization about doing precisely this with their project management function as part of an overall improvement program. If anyone is interested in learning more about the approach, you can email me at john@caddellinsightgroup.com.

Lets look at your sabretooth analogy. Eventually, someone said “if you wave a burning branch at the sabretooth, they back off”. Surely that’s where the great leap forward came?

Learning from trial and error teaches you to avoid error. Learning from trial and success teaches you to succeed.

Thank you for your mention of the Mistake Bank and sorry I didn’t notice it till now!

I’d like to comment on the observation that successes matter too, and we should keep record of good practices for future use.

I agree with that sentiment, but I believe that use of best practice in project management is limited. Most projects I’ve been involved with (software development, systems implementation) are complex in nature–that is, they have so many moving parts, human, technological and otherwise, that each is unique. In these environments, there’s a school of thought that avoiding mistakes may be more useful than trying to emulate best practice.

This has roots, according to proponents, in our evolution. Our ancestors learned by trial and error, and shared stories to convey those learnings: “One time a guy walked close by the sabertoothed tiger and got eaten; best to keep your distance.”

Another trap with “best practice” is that it makes us feel good to remember the positive things that happened, and as a result we can avert our eyes from what went wrong. We then make the same mistakes over and over again (have you ever seen that happen?).

Because mistake learning is so useful, and because it’s become so unnatural to us (who want and expect 100% success, especially when we have a project plan that says so!), posts like yours are very important to help change people’s thinking.

regards, John