Project Lessons Learned - How To Reflect and Learn In An One Hour Session
End of the year time? What kind of session could you run?
You run a project and at one moment in time, you figure out you could have learned from some situations and act differently next time.
How about doing a "Lessons Learned" session either in the middle of the project or at the end?
The sequence you have in this session can be repeated with the same team or merge results from different teams.
The KEY FACTOR here is to follow up on it afterward and check with the team if the decided action points were implemented, learn from them, and iterate. Only in this way do the reflection and learnings make a difference!
A new template in Miroverse for you
You can find the template for this session in Miroverse and use it as many times as you need. The board as a talk track included a video showing you how to use it.
Please give it some love ❤️ if you like it in Miroverse:)
How did I come up with this short session?
It was last year when I was asked to come up with a short session where one team could reflect upon their learnings during their project.
The request was to be able to run in ONE HOUR.
Wow, I said, this is really hard! I usually need sessions of a minimum of 1,5 hours to be able to run a session similar to a retrospective. And now one hour?
I was thinking of having some kind of Mentimeter word cloud, to ‘read the room’ fast so I created one in Miro or with sticky notes in person. Then I went through the reflection part, decided, and committed. It went super cool in one hour and the participants were so amazed at how much they could do in this time. Afterwards, I was iterating on it in person, online and this initial version was the best one.
This is why I decided to share it after trying it out with other teams as well.
What is the structure of the session?
Word-cloud - where are we?
Do you know the software that is able to create word clouds? I wanted to create something manually because I wanted to make it more interactive. So I used the following idea:
Let's hear what is on your mind when you think of your project.
Take 1 minute to write 3 words that come to your mind when you think about your project.
Every person reads the words they wrote so that everyone gets a short impression of how everyone's perspective is.
(optional or the facilitator does it) cluster the words so that you have a pattern of words that came to the mind of the participants
Reflection time
We learn more from reflection upon an experience rather than from the experience itself.
Let's imagine you are with the whole team on a boat.
How was the good wind helping your boat to go forward? Take 1 minute to write down all the things that come to your mind.
Think about the sun and the good vibes, what made you as a team feel good? Take 1 minute to write things down.
Think about the anchor and what holds you as a team back. Take 1 minute to write down what comes to your mind.
Learn and Decide
Think upon your learnings from the project and decide which actions you will take.
Use the learning card to write down your learnings and actions. Take 5 minutes to think and write.
Share 1 or 2 that have the deepest learnings for you.
Put on each card the name of the person who commits to make sure that the action point will be done.
Personal commitment
It is not enough to commit to a team sometimes. A personal commitment brings a special touch to the whole momentum and helps the action points to be really put into practice.
Out of all the learnings, pick up one action point that you commit to personally do in the next 2 weeks.
Take 4 minutes to think and write down.
Share it with the team.
Congratulate the others for their efforts to learn and grow! Hi5 the person next to you!
Bottom lines:
Learning out of reflection is what brings you the power to grow, and go forward. Following up on your learnings and action points helps you arrive at the next level. So, one piece of advice is when scheduling such a session, then schedule as well a follow-up session. It will make a difference!
Resources:
Strategyzer Learning Card: https://www.strategyzer.com/library/the-learning-card
Sailboat Retrospective by Johanna Torstensson: https://miro.com/miroverse/sailboat-retrospective/
Visualization using Drawify app in Miro, author of drawings from Drawify: Ben Crothers