This Lessons Learned and Final Report example is the Lessons Learned and Final Report of the Quality of Life project — the example I follow in my book Project Management in 10 Steps, from the first page to the last. It is the document of Step 10 of the book. Open it to see the finished document on a real project, then write your own.

About the Quality of Life project

A personal project, run alongside a full-time job: you are the project manager and the customer. One objective — “improve my quality of life, sustainably” — with four key results (annual income, monthly balance, productivity at work, BMI), served by five deliverables: a promotion at your company, lower monthly spending, fewer unproductive hours, fewer incidents and a healthy life. The scope is known and stable, so the approach is predictive. The project runs from October 2017 to December 2018, and the documents show it as it stood on 15 December 2017.

What is in this Lessons Learned and Final Report example?

Sections:

• Objectives
• Planned vs. Actual
• Were the objectives achieved?
• Was the project delivered on time?
• Within budget?
• Did it meet the scope?
• Value and benefits realized
• Benefits that have not matured yet
• The Project
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Project issues
• Recommendations to adopt on future projects
• Open issues
• Supplier performance

One of the lessons learned in this example

The mentor missed two Friday slots in November, and the validation of the action plan queued up — the issue the lessons learned register records, with its response: send the material 24 hours before and agree a backup slot on Monday mornings. The lessons learned recommendation for future projects: half an hour a week of a key person is a real constraint — plan around it from Step 1, not as a note.

How to use it

1. Read this Lessons Learned and Final Report example beside Step 10 of the book: it shows what "done" looks like.
2. Open the blank template and write your own project into it.
3. Or let the free Project Together course do the typing: it reads your project board and writes this same document, with your numbers in it.

The blank template

Prefer to start from a blank page? Download the Lessons Learned Template.

The whole example, in one download

Every document of the Quality of Life example, the templates of the ten steps and the Horizon Transport corporate example are in the Together Kit of Project Management in 10 Steps, free for readers of the book. See the book.

Source: PMBOK Guide, Eighth Edition (Project Management Institute).

Lessons Learned Template — Free Download (PMBOK 8)

Blank template: Lessons Learned Template