Lessons Learned sessions - effectiveness
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Most of us as Project Managers never forget to conduct "Lessons Learned"sessions during the project close phase and do a detailed report to be presented to the Project Management Office / Project Office and the management with various stakeholders' inputs and feedback points.
It really sounds great and fulfilling when we say that we have closed the project in a much professional way after the Lessons Learned session apart from other administrative closures of the project.

The "Lessons Learned" session is very much a vital information as part of historic projects' database maintained by the Project Office, as we all know. Its an echo of various participants from the business, the performing departments like IT, HR, Legal, Marketing, etc.
If we think deeply from customer's perspective of the time and effort that
are spent during such sessions and the feedback points that are furnished, there is a clear message that voted "Improvement Points / Suggestions" are need to be implemented immediately (OR) at least evaluated by the management (OR) Project Office for future implementation.

The implementation of such "Improvement points / suggestions" from these Lessons Learned sessions would reflect on the maturity of the organization's process adaptability and influences the 'Continuous Improvement Plans' of the department/s and hence the organization/s.
Is there a serious considerations by departments and organizations to implement such "Improvement points / Suggestions"? (OR) they are kept in the historical database of project information systems!

How to improve the scores:
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We value customer, project members, end-user feedback very highly and collected some high rated / voted "Suggestions" etc. Remember that there is high expectation from customer / project members / end users side of the implementation.

To effectively carry out a planned implementation of such "Suggestions", the departments / organizations need to provide adequate empowerment to centralized departments like Project Office and the management need to encourage such bodies to neutrally monitor those suggestions by using a systematically organized database of such "Suggestions". These"Suggestions / Improvement Area points" need to be tagged with a control-number and a Senior Management person of a relevant department has to be assigned a Responsibility.

At the same time, regular updates has to be provided to the initiator of such "Suggestion / Improvement Area points"as a matter of feedback. Such plan needs also to include expected date of implementation, any evaluation if needed, expected % of improvement, productivity improvement % and such metrics to measure the effectiveness of such "Improvement Areas / Suggestions points" that we gather from most of our projects and programs.

If your organization / department is using a different and effective
approach / strategy in implementing such "Improvement Areas" of Lessons Learned sessions, please do share with me / us, and that would help many of us to learn here.

When you share the knowledge with others, it gets refined more and grows itself profoundly, unlike material assets!

I would write about "Customer Expectations" in my next notes.