Planning should be adapted to the nature of a project

 


Planning should be adapted to the nature of a project. The lessons learned document is a part of the project manager’s artifacts for the project. This document contains information for the project scope and includes what went well on the project, what challenges the project experienced, and is used as an integral part of the project planning process. It discusses the positive and negative aspects of the project, which is helpful for the strategic planning of future projects.

analyze project documents and then develop a lessons learned document based on your analysis.

Read the following scenario:

Next Day Solutions is enhancing its online services with a new web application that allows customers to submit loan requests electronically. Flavia Howard has been assigned as the project manager, working alongside a team. Together, her team will use the agile approach and Scrum practices to complete the project.

As the project progresses, Flavia’s team will gather and document key insights to ensure continuous improvement for future projects. One of the project manager’s responsibilities is to complete a lessons learned document, which will reflect on the challenges, successes, and insights gained during the project planning process.

 

Successes and What Went Well (The Positive)

 

Clear Business Mandate and Stakeholder Buy-In: The initial Project Charter was exceptionally clear in its business objective (enhancing customer services), securing immediate support and resources from executive sponsors. This prevented scope creep caused by lack of direction.

Recommendation: Replicate the structured executive approval process and clearly articulated business case for all future projects.

Early Establishment of Quality Criteria: The team quickly collaborated to define a comprehensive Definition of Done (DoD), which included code review and necessary compliance checks. This immediately set a high standard for quality, mitigating potential technical debt later on.

Recommendation: Dedicate a full session in project initiation to defining the DoD before any feature estimation begins.

Sample Answer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Based on the provided scenario for Next Day Solutions' web application project, here is an analysis of typical project documents and a resulting Lessons Learned document.

Since the scenario focuses on the planning phase of an Agile/Scrum project, the "analysis of project documents" below focuses on the key planning artifacts created or utilized at the start of such a project.