Learning from a Project Post-Mortem

In my previous employment as a government contractor working as a consultant for the Navy in a human capital and organizational development capacity, I was an individual contributor on a project for a client that was not as successful as planned. In an effort to undergo an organizational culture change, one client hired our group to develop a change management initiative with a three-pronged training approach: 1) An introduction to the disciplines and principles of a Learning Organization (Senge, 1990; Senge, Ross, Smith, Roberts, & Kleiner, 1994), 2) an application workshop for teams with specific performance challenges, and 3) a facilitator development program to create a cadre of performance improvement workshop leaders. As part of the project, we had to design the three training offerings and then implement them within the organization. Prong 1 became a 3-day training offering that all employees were required to take, Prong 2 was offered to specific teams selected by the performance improvement division, and about 200 facilitators were selected for the development program. Over the course of 3 years, we trained 5,000 of the 10,000 employees in the 3-day program, approximately 500 team members, and all 200 facilitators.

Unfortunately, at the conclusion of our third year, the contract was not renewed in full and instead reduced to 1/4 of its original value. The client opted to redesign all three programs and develop in-house trainers to take over. The remaining part of the contract was simply to help them in the transition period and provide minimal consulting on the new direction and developments.

In a post-mortem view, there were many actions taken and project management tools used that contributed to success in the 3-year stint, and there were many actions and tools lacking that lead to the project’s unsuccessful end. In the beginning, we had consistent and constant communication with all stakeholders in the process and developed the all-important “sincere commitment by senior management” (Murphy, 1994, p. 9). We frequently consulted with subject-matter-experts in our clients’ organization throughout the instructional design process and tested the training program many times before the official implementation rollout. As for internal measures, we had a dedicated project manager on the contract that oversaw our work and the project’s progress.

As the project progressed, however, we suffered the consequences of not keeping all of our stakeholders active and engaged (Greer, 2010). As the Prong 1 program delivery peaked, we were training approximately 90 people per week, and even our project manager was being pulled in to conduct training sessions. The sheer amount of delivery of collateral work was overwhelming for our small team. Thus, our focus narrowed to rapid implementation and we lost sight of our communication plan and evaluation program. For the senior managers funding the project, we failed to keep them adequately interested in the program and prove to them why an external consultant was so vital. After pouring literally millions of dollars into the project, they began to wonder why their internal staff could not take over since we had reached the 50% training saturation point. In addition, we realized post-mortem we had failed to recognize some internal instructional designers and performance improvement experts within the client organization as stakeholders. To our surprise, they became a vocal group against our involvement in the project and persuaded senior management to allow the take-over. Overall, a more project-focused approach, dedicated communication plan, and better understanding of stakeholders upfront may have saved this project.

 

References

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.

Murphy, C. (1994). Utilizing project management techniques in the design of instructional materials. Performance & Instruction, 33(3), 9–11. Copyright by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Used by permission via the Copyright Clearance Center

Senge, P.M. (1990). The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Currency/Doubleday.

Senge, P.M., Ross, R., Smith, B., Roberts, C., & Kleiner, A. (1994). The fifth discipline fieldbook: Strategies and tools for building a learning organization. New York: Random House Publishing.