Lessons Learned

Overview

Lessons learned document insights from a running or completed project — what worked, what did not, and what conclusion follows for future projects. They are the organizational memory of Six Sigma practice and belong in the Control phase, but are best kept continuously.

Lesson: A single, self-contained learning entry with description, context, cause, and recommendation. Every lesson should make sense on its own — without knowledge of the original project.

What went well / not well: Lessons learned cover both: successes to repeat and failures to avoid. A collection of failures only quickly becomes depressing.

Recommendation: A concrete, actionable instruction for future projects — not "do better", but e.g. "run kick-off with all shifts, not just morning shift".

Categorization: Lessons are sorted by DMAIC phase, topic, or impact. This makes them searchable later — otherwise they gather dust as a flat list.

Approach

• Collect lessons continuously during the project — not only at the end. What is still remembered after three months is only a fraction of what was experienced.
• Run a short workshop at project end: "What went well, what not, what would we do differently?".
• Capture each insight as its own lesson — with description, cause, and recommendation.
• Phrase factually, no blame — lessons are not an evaluation tool.
• Categorize by DMAIC phase and topic.
• Transfer into the organization-wide collection so other projects can benefit.

Pitfalls

Captured only at project end: Waiting means forgetting. Lessons learned work best when recorded immediately after the triggering events — otherwise only the most spectacular ones remain.

Blame instead of insight: "Person X failed" is not a lesson but an accusation. Lessons describe structures, not people — otherwise the format breaks and nobody contributes honestly anymore.

Unspecific recommendations: "Communicate better" is not a recommendation but a platitude. A good recommendation is concrete enough for someone to act on it without follow-up questions.

Document disappears: Without a central store and search, the collection ends up in a project folder and is never found again. A searchable central database is mandatory — otherwise only the project team learns, not the organization.

Only failures recorded: Successes matter just as much — otherwise the format turns into a defect list. Deliberately ask "what went well".

No follow-up mechanism: Lessons are useless if they do not flow into standards, templates, or training. For every lesson define: where does it take effect, who carries it forward?

Examples

This module ships with the following example datasets — load any of them in the app with a single click.

Available in the following cycles

• DMAIC: Control
• DMADV: Verify
• 8D: D8 — Recognize the Team