How  Lessons Learned are Managed

GMAT lessons learned include things that we did well and should keep doing, and large scale things we should be doing to improve the software or our project.   Lessons learned are each discussed by the team and if we decide there is a real issue, we require a plan for improvement.   To make sure we are efficiently handling lessons learned, here are some high level guidelines for creating them.

What is a Lesson Learned

Lessons learned are issues that cause significant problems or could have caused significant problems, or are issues where we did something that significantly improved the software or our project.   Lessons learned require group discussion and probably a change in team habits, process or strategy.

Lessons learned satisfy one the following criteria:

• Issue that is putting the project at greater risk than necessary
• Issue that is causing significant inefficiency
• Issue that is significantly lowering quality

What is Not a Lesson Learned

A lesson learned is not a minor annoyance, a tweak to an existing process, or something that can be resolved between team members in the everyday process of getting work done. Team members should bring these types of issues up at meetings, or work them among the team members involved.

A minor issue, (i.e.  not a lessons learned), satisfies one of these criteria:

• Tweak to an existing process
• Minor annoyance or gripe
• Can be resolved by just picking up the phone, or discussing via email, or weekly meeting
• Does not require significant change in habits or processes

Things We Should Keep Doing

Things We Should Change

Do Better

Start Doing

• Resume following process. 
  
  • Before a commit is made to the central repository, test the update.  (Example: the Ap.dat file for the Ionosphere model was committed and pushed, and scripts that use it failed to run on all 3 platforms.)

Stop Doing