Another useful tool in the Lessons Learned process is the Lessons Learned Survey. This is a survey that can be sent to team members during or after a project, to solicit their feedback on how the project was conducted. It applies to any project; and questions can easily be added to focus on additional areas for your project.
A survey like this can be very useful for capturing lessons learned from the project while they're fresh in people's mind. The results can be summarized and recommendations passed on to future teams.
It’s usually best to send this survey by email to members of the project team. Let them know that results can be kept anonymous (to encourage people to be frank in their assessments). Send out this survey before any group “lessons learned” meetings. The feedback you receive from the survey can help point to particular areas that should get special exploration in the group lessons learned meeting.
Again, use this if it’s meaningful to your projects - it’s just another template or project tool that I’ve picked up along the way and wanted to share with our readers. I’ve found it to be helpful in gathering post-project information from my team members on several key projects.
Post-Project Survey
SECTION 1: General Project Issues and Communication
The questions are geared to your particular project but wherever appropriate you can comment about release-level issues too.
Note: add any particular comments you wish....
1. How clearly defined were the objectives for this project?
___Very ____somewhat ___not very ___not at all
2. How clearly defined were the objectives for your work?
___Very ____somewhat ___not very ___not at all
3. How clear were you on your role in the project?
___Very ____somewhat ___not very ___not at all
4. How adequately involved did you feel in project decisions?
___Very ____somewhat ___not very ___not at all
If you did not feel involved, what decisions did you feel left out of?
5. How efficient and effective were project team meetings?
___Very ____somewhat ___not very ___not at all
What would you change?
6. How efficient and effective were technical meetings?
___Very ____somewhat ___not very ___not at all
What would you change?
7. How well do you feel the executives support this project?
___Very ____somewhat ___not very ___not at all
8. How adequate has cross-functional participation been?
___Very ____somewhat ___not very ___not at all
What were the problems encountered in the project-functional area relationship, why, and how could they be fixed? What cross-functional participation, if any, was lacking?
9. Do you feel appreciated, recognized and rewarded for your efforts?
___Very ____somewhat ___not very ___not at all
What if anything has been lacking?
10. To what degree is do you feel the entire team was committed to the project schedule?
___Very ____somewhat ___not very ___not at all
What if any issues are there?
11. To what degree have any "people issues" gotten in the way?
___Very ____somewhat ___not very ___not at all
What issues?
12. What communication, organization, structural problems in general were encountered, and how could we have done better in these areas?
SECTION 2: Schedule Estimation Issues
NOTE: This survey isn't intended to collect exhaustive data on everything right now. We might decide after the post-mortem to work with a sub-group to investigate certain estimation issues, in order to help us improve next time around. This survey just helps us ferret out the rough scope of any issues.
Which of the following estimation issues did you personally have and what was the impact?
___ I was diverted to work on another project full-time.
Project: ________________________________________ Diverted for how long? ________________
Impact on your project work: ____________________________________________________________
___ I overestimated the amount of time I would have each week to work on this project.
The other work that interfered was ________________________________________________________
The amount of time per week it took up was ________________________________________________
Impact: calendar schedule slip of ____days ____weeks ____ months
___ My initial schedule did not include some pieces of technical design or coding work that I subsequently realized I had to do.
Describe briefly: ______________________________________________________________________
Impact (additional hours of work): ________________________________________________________
___ My initial schedule did not take into account certain project "other" work such as attending other people's design reviews, doing two rounds of my own design reviews, etc.
Describe: ____________________________________________________________________________
Impact: calendar slip to my work of __ days __ weeks __ months
___ My estimates for particular tasks were not accurate.
Describe: type of task, how "off" the estimate was (days, weeks).
Why was it difficult to estimate?
What would help produce better estimates next time?
__ I unexpectedly had to re-do some work.
Describe: (Did something in the system design change that forced you to redesign? Was there a spec misunderstanding? etc.)___
Impact on your schedule: _______________________________________________________________
What could have helped prevent the problem?
Knowing what you know now, how would you do the scheduling/estimating process differently next time to avoid any problems noted above?
SECTION 3: Design, Implementation, Test Processes
1. How effective was our architecture/system design process in phase 2 and 3?
__Very __somewhat ___not very ___not at all
Comments:_________________________________________________________________________
2. How effective were our functional specs?
__very __somewhat ___not very ___not at all
Comments:_________________________________________________________________________
3. How effective were our design (or implementation) specs?
__Very __somewhat ___not very ___not at all
Comments:__________________________________________________________________________
4. How effective were our design reviews?
__Very __somewhat ___not very ___not at all
Comments:_________________________________________________________________________
5. How effective were our code reviews or hardware reviews?
__Very __somewhat ___not very ___not at all
Comments:_________________________________________________________________________
6. How well were interfaces defined?
__Very __somewhat ___not very ___not at all
Comments:_________________________________________________________________________
7. How well were design and interface decisions documented?
__Very __somewhat ___not very ___not at all
Comments:_________________________________________________________________________
8. How effective has interaction/cooperation between technical "Sub-teams" been?
___Very ____somewhat ___not very ___not at all
Comments:_________________________________________________________________________
9. How useful was your unit testing?
__very __somewhat ___not very ___not at all
Comments:_________________________________________________________________________
Did you take unit testing into account in your schedule? ______________________________________
10. How smooth do you feel Integration has been?
__very __somewhat ___not very ___not at all
Comments (why/why not?):___________________________________________________________
11. How comprehensive was integration testing, especially to allow SQA testing to get off to a good start?
__very __somewhat ___not very ___not at all
Comments:_________________________________________________________________________
12. How well is the build process working?
__very __somewhat ___not very ___not at all
Comments:_________________________________________________________________________
13. To what degree did you have the tools you needed for testing?
__very __somewhat ___not very ___not at all
Comments:_________________________________________________________________________
SECTION 4: Perceived Project Life Cycle, Development, or Process Issues
1. Is there any way in which you think our development process hampered this project?
If so, how?
2. What would you change about our development process?
3. What would you like to better understand or see better documented about how to use our process on this type of project?
SECTION 5: Closing
1. What were up to 5 main causes for schedule slips, and how could we avoid those causes in the future?
2. Was the project significantly delayed/hampered by outside dependencies (outside to the project, that is)? Which ones? How can we resolve these issues?
3. What were the main bottlenecks on the process?
4. What were the main sources of frustration in the project?
5. If we had to do this project again, what is the one thing that you would change (related to process, not to technical solutions)?
6. For the next project, how could we improve on the way project was conducted?
Feel free to add any other comments here: