Lesson's Learned

[LauraRa1]

Hi there Is anyone else using Workfront to log 'Lessons Learned' from projects? If so I'm looking for ideas..... Thanks!

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Laura, My colleague Corey Young who's a Senior Consultant with Workfront gave a very interesting presentation last month (which I attended and enjoyed), and among a variety of topics, offered some ideas around "Lesson's Learned". The webinar was recorded , and I'd invite you to review it at your convenience. Regards, Doug

[LauraRa1]

Awesome! Thanks Doug :)

[DavidCo3]

Hi Laura, We log Risks and Issues into our projects (using a number of lessons-learned oriented custom fields) and use this as the data for our lessons learned process (outputting reports to PDF to circulate). I have also just added an option for people to record positive outcomes that we want to learn from, not just negative ones. Regards, David

[KarenRu]

David- any chance you can share some of the custom fields you use? Curious what you track. would love to see the report circulated. tks Karen

[DavidCo3]

Hi Karen - please see attached. I've redacted the confidential stuff but this should give you an overview. Let me know if any other queries. :)

Regards, David.

[DavidCo3]

By the way, this sample report is grouped by the entry date of the issues, assuming it is run for a specific project. Obviously if we are running it for multiple projects we'd probably group by project name and then by week etc.

[KarenRu]

Hi Dave- this is great!!! thanks for sharing. I'm going to work on some custom fields to utilize issues in the same way. Question- do you utilize issues- ONLY for lessons learned? And are these issues treated for information only- or is there action required by the pm when the issue is logged? I'm looking for ways to flag scope creep as well. Curious if I add a custom field called "issue type" and classify our issues? How do you handle scope screep in projects? And couple questions re: your custom fields: Impact Types: is that set up as a check box? Severity?- is that a custom field? what other options do you have than Extreme? And- how do PM's in your organization use these reports? tks! Karen

[DavidCo3]

Hi Karen, It's a big topic...will do my best to answer your questions! We use the Issue object to record Risks and Issues. We do not use the standard Risk object. The reason we do this is so that PMs can log Risks and if they eventuate, then convert them into an Issue simply by changing a "Risk Status" custom field. The obvious benefit is you have the link/history to when something was a Risk and save users time compared to creating a new Issue manually. The main draw-back of having Risks using the Issue object is that users need to click the "New Issue" button to create a Risk. It's a bit confusing but overall is worthwhile we believe. Scope creep is something we have not addressed specifically in Workfront yet, but we plan to do so in the near future...probably using Change Requests. Yes - Impact Type is a check-box. Be aware that if you choose to do this, you lose the ability to group by them....not sure if I would choose a different field type in retrospect but it is working OK for us at the moment. Yes, 'SEVERITY' is a custom field with a format of Number. Options are: Extreme, High, Medium and Low. It has values associated to each of the options, which are used in a calculation (Severity is multiplied with another custom 'PRIORITY') to determine an overall Issue Rating. Lessons Learned Reports are used (generally) to produce the contents for the Lessons Learned meetings. Hope the above helps. If you wanted some assistance setting this up, I can put you in contact with the consultants (Work Management Australia) who implemented it for us originally. Regards, David.