Re: Conducting a postmortem
Anybody here have experience or resources you're willing to share about how
to (how not to?) conduct a productive postmortem at the end of a project?
Kate,
If nobody died and the product shipped, perhaps it would be a bit sunnier to refer to the discussion as "lessons learned," rather than post mortem. On the other hand, if a baseball bat was raised in anger at some point during the project ... . But I digress.
You began, I hope, with a project plan. This project plan, if you work for an organization that embraces the Capability Maturity Model and employs some kind of gated development process, was probably generated from a template for similar projects. The template has, built into it, certain expectations for how long a given activity ought to take.
So one thing you can do is look at the original template for the project plan and compare the actual amount of time each step took. If you can compare your results not only to the template but to the records of other similar projects, you can provide feedback to the folks who own the template (perhaps they are called the Project Office) on more realistic estimates for certain steps (up or down).
If it turns out that most projects meet the template goals fairly well but your project was the outlier, then you can look at the circumstances surrounding the variances. Did we not allow enough of a bumper on this step? Was this a one-time disaster that nobody could have foreseen (building was flooded for a week because a dam burst, for example)? Did we figure everybody at 100% productive time instead of a more realistic 80%? Did we forget about holidays and vacations?
You probably also have some sort of quality standards that apply to your deliverables (documents, designs, finished products, etc.). You can use the session to evaluate where you met, exceeded, or failed to meet those standards and ask what could have been done differently to come closer to the mark.
You probably have some project metrics that can be compared to target values. This is a good opportunity to see how you did in that regard, as well.
IO'm sure others will have additional suggestions.
HTH,
Dick
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Conducting a postmortem: From: Kate Robinson
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