Assembling The Project Compendium - Computing Technical ...

29%
Benefit
realisation plans
Figure 5.16 Percentage of respondents who identified components as contributing limited value to project success
Seventeen percent of people indicated that lessons learned contributed little to projects.
Some reasons noted were lack of responsibility for taking lessons forward, inability to
control or improve upon issues identified in a previous project, output from an ineffective
lessons learnt exercise or a poorly written report is unconstructive and “Lessons are often
discussed but not learnt”. Several people advocated if lessons learned exercises were
carried out properly, the output would be highly valuable. Thirteen percent indicated that
communication plans added little value to project success for reasons such as standardised
communication is not always necessary, small projects do not warrant them and
communication plans can be contained within other deliverables. Status reports were
thought to add little value by eight percent of respondents because they are often not read
or out of date by time they are, verbal updates are sometimes preferred or there is an
expectation for PMs to solve the issues rather than highlight them.
Elements of project success that were rated highly relevant by most respondents were
achievement of business objectives, customer/user satisfaction and delivery of benefits,
whereas benefit realisation plans was the most frequently nominated component thought to
add little or no value to the project.
Components with limited value
Lessons learned Communication
plans
Status reports/
presentations
Other components identified by the respondents however not incorporated in the survey
include risk management plans, quality assurance approaches, various testing documents,
governance model documents, seller/contact performance documents, defect tracking tools,
business continuity tools and plans, use case diagrams, network diagrams, earned value
tools, estimating tools, stakeholder analysis documents and calendars.
17%
13%
8%
45