Learning from projects
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r 2003 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved. 0160-5682/03 $25.00 www.palgrave-journals.com/jors
Learning from projects T Williams* Strathclyde University, Glasgow, UK 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. Journal of the Operational Research Society (2003) 54, 443–451. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601549 Keywords: project management; learning; feedback
Introduction Much of the business world is becoming project oriented. Developing new technological products, building new capital assets, or undertaking unique large-scale enterprises all require major projects to be undertaken. And in recent years, projects have become more complex both as technology becomes more complex and also as projects become more time constrained.1 The need for organisations generally to be ‘learning organisations’2 is rightly emphasised, and the need to manage projects well, and to learn from one project to the next, is clearly of particular importance to business. However, business seems to be particularly weak on learning from projects, rarely exploring the reasons for success or failure, and rarely adapting management behaviour in the light of these lessons. ‘One of the great challenges is the largely untapped opportunity for transforming our projects’ performance. We have yet to discern how to systematically extract and disseminate management lessons as we move from project to project’.3 This paper reviews the work in this area and proposes some mechanisms for carrying out reviews in the light of this work. The paper seeks to show by reviewing this work that learning is important for any organisation; but learning from projects is an important requirement for the project-oriented organisation; thus there is a need for reflection upon the experience after a project;
*Correspondence: T Williams, Department of Management Science, Strathclyde Business School, Graham Hills Building, 40 George Street, Glasgow G1 1QE, UK. E-mail: [email protected], Website: http://www.managementscience.org/
however, complex projects behave in ways that are nonor counter-intuitive so many lessons cannot be identified by unaided reflection; particularly because of the feedback within the structure of causality underlying a project out-turn; that the use of mapping (
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