Learning from projects

The ‘learning organisation’ is frequently emphasised in the literature and in practice, and this is particularly important for project-oriented organisations. However, experience tells us that organisations tend not to learn adequately from project experiences. This paper reviews some of the work seeking to model and explain the behaviour of complex projects, which explains why lessons are difficult to learn from such projects—not the easy and obvious lessons but the lessons about complex non-intuitive project behaviours. From there it looks at why projects are frequently not reviewed, and seeks to offer practical proposals for carrying out reviews, using small models to enable lessons to be learned that provide understanding (rather than simply data), and distributing that learning around the organisation.