Benefits of Conducting Postproject Reviews to Capture Lessons Learned

Postproject review is a process of evaluating the success and failure of a project and learning from what worked well, what did not work well, and what the project team could improve upon for similar projects. Project teams often ignore conducting postproject reviews because of the pressure of moving from one project to the next resulting in significant loss of knowledge. Researchers have demonstrated that conducting postproject reviews to capture lessons learned significantly improves organizational learning. Guided by the concept of organizational learning, the purpose of this study was to explore how organizational leaders in the New York metropolitan area use postproject reviews to capture lessons learned and prevent project teams from repeating same mistakes in similar projects. The study explored the benefits and barriers of conducting postproject reviews. The findings include strategies used by organizational leaders to ensure the conduct of postproject reviews, barriers to conducting postproject reviews, and strategies for conducting effective postproject reviews.