Effective use of lessons learned to conduct the project review for ERP implementation

According to a recent study, it has been said that “lessons learned” is one of the most important and “value added” aspects of the project management lifecycle. However, it has been reported that it is often the most ignored part of finishing a project. Various reasons have been offered for this phenomenon. This article describes the systematic approach to initiate the project review on the specific project identified for requiring the formal quality audit based on the use of project management information system for having the execution date fixed by the independent quality reviewer with the project manager. Then, the project review process is started by retrieving the lessons learned data from the lessons learned repository, which were collected from the previous project reviews for the relevant ERP implementation projects, for the preparation of conducting the project document review and project stakeholder interviews. A case study methodology was applied to the historical lessons learned data of the ERP implementation projects conducted by the solution provider for their customers in the various industries in Japan, which were retrieved for a period of four years from 2014 to 2017 to analyze how the lessons learned collected from the project reviews of the earlier projects were reused in those of the succeeding projects conducted during the period. Use of lessons learned based on the past project review results was found to be effective in focusing on the specific areas projected for improvement during the processes of conducting the project document review and project stakeholder interviews, as well as putting together the practical recommendations for the findings to finalize the results of the project review, which were to be formally presented and submitted to the customer as the results of the quality audit.