Gathering Lessons Learned
Start gathering and documenting lessons learned from the beginning of the project. At the beginning of the project, identify and document the lessons that you hope will be learned from the project and the intellectual capital that should be created. These might include:
Lessons learned should be recorded as soon as possible after the lesson is experienced. As the project proceeds, you should keep an ongoing list of lessons learned so that you will not lose any. In addition, you should solicit inputs for lessons learned from delivery team members, suppliers, sponsors, and key stakeholders.
It is very effective for all of the project managers to share their lessons learned in a respository that is accessible to everyone. There is no reason why all the project managers need to make the same mistakes.
Everytime you are starting a new project review the lessons learned. As you are defining your processes and creating your documents this will remind you of the things that worked well and the things that did not work well.