En project management We talk about project review, closure, retrospective, debriefing, continuous improvement... call it what you want. The idea is to stop! Stop producing, to think. Think before acting again. A ritual, with a major challenge at stake: improving ourselves collectively! But beyond intentions, 99% of CIOs tell us that in the end, they never have time to review a project.
Like the kick-off, the project report is a”Must“. Translate: from a certain size of company, it is a mandatory step in project portfolio management. If we want to look chic, we can say that it is a “meta” activity with high added value in the culture of your “learning” organization. If you want to call a spade a spade, it's a worthwhile investment !
So what is a project report? What should it include? Why do it? How do you do it effectively? What are the new trends? And finally: what are the typical frames that you can use?
We take stock of the balance sheet: let's go!
In the dictionary, the definition of the word balance is as follows: Bilan (from Italian Bilancio, balance) means “statement of assets and liabilities of a company” and, by extension, the sum of the positive and negative aspects of something, overall result.
In The “PMBoK®, “In the Old Testament of the project manager”, the assessment process is called “closure”. It has the same importance as the initialization, planning, execution, monitoring and control phases. Except that it is “the end of the gesture”. And therefore, the end of the contractual relationship between the parties involved.
This phase contains: “Receiving customer approval, archiving documents, closing contracts, evaluating lessons learned, and rewarding performance are all part of the closing process.”
A project report therefore aims to lead to proposals for improvements. for each of the aspects of the project to be taken into account for the next “projects”. Of course, we try to identify what gave good results and, what did. Some less good.
As you know, digital project manager: studies remind us that 3/4 of projects do not reach their goals (1)!
The end of a project is a good time to:
The end of a project is not a good time to:
🚫 Attention: the project report and the project review ! Project reviews take place at the end of each major phase and are often planned from the start of the project.
No: “I don't want to take the time” is not the same.
Yes - and that is why, as far as possible, freedom of speech must be given. It is in these moments that team spirit is built.
If you want to continue in this direction and keep flops going... don't change anything!
What do you mean? Do you have a strategic transformation project and you don't have a budget?
If we have done continuous debriefs, it may in fact be useless in the heat. But if we want to take stock of the medium-term value, another vision of the project is revealed.
The typical content of a “classic” project report is as follows:
Traditionally, CIOs focus on this first axis. 🚫 Error!
How can this process be improved by taking into account the evolution of the role of the IT department, which has become a fully-fledged strategic business partner?
With digital acceleration And the globalization of agile culture and the evolution of the role of the CIO within organizations, new practices have indeed emerged. The methods and the assessment ritual have also changed! Review of some examples based on field observations and CIO interviews.
In general, the added value and the expected gains of a project are not visible as soon as it is closed and put into production! IIt may be relevant from a marketing point of view of the IT department, among other things, to create this time for reporting and consolidating the targeted gains around the famous “business value”. What is the overall value generated and what were the actual gains of the project at 6 months/1 year?
Another example, simply in terms of vocabulary: the term “project review” has given way to “retrospectives”. In the same way as in the culture of development delivery, short iterations are now more in fashion, more intermediate retrospectives are being carried out.
Thanks to its recent status as a full-fledged business partner, the IT department, positioned as a transformation leader, now addresses strategic projects. Project reports are no longer operated in silos. But indeed in interdependence. It's about offer the teams a global vision of the cathedral to which they contributed.
Beyond the content of the project, we will therefore seek to place the project in its global context! Did it contribute to the progress of one or more of the organization's major strategic projects?
In addition to the traditional open questions such as + and - on various axes. We are increasingly seeing that project reviews open the door to dialogue on more targeted issues. For example, “If you had to do this project again, what would you have liked to know from the start?”
Something that allows you to structure the “lessons learned”, what has been experienced, digested and which can then be disseminated... behaviors, beyond tools!
Finally, remote obliges, teleworking has encouraged the carrying out of remote project reviews. Can we make a good assessment of projects remotely? The emotional, personal and collective challenges are such that it would be a shame to deprive ourselves of the dynamics and energy of a moment of sharing, of team life “in real life”. It's like offering to have a drink... by video... :-)
However, if you have no choice, using tools dedicated to this type of process can facilitate your assessment. We can mention Klaxoon or Miro or others. The editors understood this well by offering some retro templates. That said, you will see at the end of this article that a simple 5-page power point template is enough to animate this process. # teasing.
One prerequisite “essential”:
Carry out your final project assessment “in the cold”. Indeed, while hot debriefing is essential, it is not enough to anchor sustainable learning and cultural changes.
Two key phases to be respected as part of any project review:
First of all we free speech! To achieve this, it is necessary, among other things, to establish a secure framework, for example by clearly announcing the intentions and the scope of the process: who will the assessment be intended for? Once the frame is in place, it may be useful to suggest an “ice breaker”. Once the conditions are met, the actual assessment is carried out. Using one of the agile grids, lean... whatever. (discover 5 models at the end of this article).
Finally, we can move on to phase 2: the solutions, the action plan. It is this phase that is often overlooked. From experience, we spend too much time on phase 1.
Three dimensions of the project report: The individual, the collective, and the corporate.
Individual assessment is carried out by each individual on the team Is it a pleonasm? In fact not that much! There is too much of a tendency to evaluate others. “You did that... you should have...” the famous “You who kill”! Ideally, it is up to everyone to “self-debrief”. If you take the time to carry out a quality project review, this is the ideal scenario.
The success of the collective dimension can however be evaluated by everyone. With a particular place in the PMO/ project manager, whose responsibility is to animate the collective. To do this, he can prepare a series of open questions, for example “If you had to do this project again, what would you have liked to know from the start?”
Finally, it will remain at assess the dynamics of the business. The project was carried out in a strategic context, in the midst of corporate issues that should be analyzed and recalled.
Tips : for axes 2 and 3, propose “TRIPS” to stakeholders. Understand a Prerequisite Individual Reflection Time. 1 minute of solo reflection, before any sharing. This will not vaccinate you against the group effect but may allow for a greater variety of responses.
At a minimum, this process will take place in the presence of your full team. Whoever “contributed” actively, the best practice is to invite people who have contributed at least 30/50% of their time:
There is more to life than technology! Outside of the digital industry, how do we analyze the differences between scoping, execution and delivery?
Without going into all the details, we selected two examples of practices in terms of non-IT project reviews.
“You never take the time to come back! What is important is to carry out weekly reports. In fact, we say it to each other all the time, all the time and we formalize it once a month.”
“It would be endless to do a project assessment on an operation such as a building with 5 years of project, plus the guarantee that runs after delivery...”
Lionel C. Real estate program director at a national developer.
Although this testimony is of course not representative of an entire sector of activity, it is nevertheless interesting to realize that this building industry, which is said to be more “mature” than IT, operates in this way, in a culture of implicit and continuous project review.
Feedback from Gilles Jurine. 15 years of active service in the Air Force, Gilles worked as a fighter pilot, instructor and training manager at the Salon de Provence Air School.: “the best debriefing after a mission is when everyone individually debriefs themselves on the mission. Versus a top-down debriefing.” The 5 invariants of each mission are: Preparation - Briefing - Mission Achievement - Debriefing - Mission Report. The debriefing is said to be “hot”, and the report is said to be “cold”.
The Model: Mad Sad Glad is an agile retrospective technique. This technique focuses on the emotional well-being of the project development team. By doing so, it helps to improve team morale and create a positive environment.
Emoji icons are used to visualize feelings about agile practices. Although most retrospective meetings are done using a traditional whiteboard method. This presentation,, will help you get the meeting across digital media. The PowerPoint template can also be used as Google slide themes for virtual meetings.
With this typical grid, it's about mapping what the teams liked, learned, missed and wanted... better known as a 4L retrospective! 😁 This popular retrospective format is loved by agile and scrum masters for its simplicity and ability to help teams set short- and long-term goals for future improvements.
Our favorite! A “capitalisable” model.
The Starfish is a concept mapping technique used in the agile and scrum project retrospective process. It provides a general overview for estimating the overall success of a project. This retrospective diagram overview provides an illustration of the starfish shape in 5 steps. The starfish shape, a metaphor for retrospective technique, will engage an audience and communicate each idea effectively. The Starfish retrospective is an action-oriented tool designed to encourage participants to create positive and actionable ideas. Instead of taking notes about what went well or didn't go well, this method allows you to go into specific details. It encourages a team to discuss ideas that generate value.
As you can see, the practice of project review has also changed. Influenced by the emergence of lean, agile, digital cultures and the development of collective intelligence processes.
The project assessment method is now carried out in several times, generally involves more stakeholders and often combines several business entities.
If you want to deepen this key concept... we invite you to continue reading with this article from the “Pro. de la Transfo” Blog:”Project review: a step forward to learn from your mistakes.”
Sources and references:
(1) Source: North American study entitled “Driving Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail”, published in 1995 in Harvard Business Review, only 30% of organizational changes are successful.
(2) The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is the Project Management Institute guide defining the fields of knowledge covering project management, and identifying good professional practices in this field.
