What is Post Implementation Review?

RobinGoldsmith  |   May 26 2009   2:44PM GMT

While I agree customers/users/stakeholders indeed should and do assess success of a system after its implementation, I believe the term “post-implementation review” (which often also is called the unfortunate term, “post mortems”) more commonly refers to an improvement-oriented analysis by the project team (which may include various users, customers, and stakeholders as well) to identify “lessons learned” what went well, what went poorly, and ways to improve each the next project.

In practice, this commonly-performed, typically final, step in the project management life cycle too often fails to provide its potential value because the lessons learned aren’t actually learned and thus aren’t applied. Consequently, in my experience, most organizations’ post-implementation review lessons learned could be produced on a photocopier. That is, because the improvements are never implemented, post-implementation reviews tend to produce the same lessons learned project after project.

Jaideep  |   May 28 2009   7:41AM GMT

Thanks Robin, I would agree with you in most of the part – yes post implementation review conducted after a certain period from project sign off can be termed as “post mortem” and a way to record “lessons learnt”. When we do some cash deposits or withdrawals or cheque deposits in our bank account – do we call the pass book entry as “post mortem”. If we look at it from a different perspective – can we term post implementation review as a reconciliation process for next projects. Improvement is a never dying process and these are some ways of identifying what improvements are required.

Definitely if the lessons learnt is just a photocopy or copy-paste process in all projects (i.e. just a formality), it clearly shows that the document is being filled for acquiring or sustaining a certification and not in real sense of improvement in the organization.