ABSTRACT
Projects are risky activities. They generally operate under significant time and budgetary pressures. Factors such as new technologies add to the risks. Many of the techniques of project management are about keeping in touch with reality. The people who undertake all these activities are subject to a range of human biases that make it all too easy to avoid painful realities until it's too late to fix them. Project reviews can aid all of these learning processes. They help project teams keep in touch with the immediate reality of what is happening on their projects, and hence to learn from and deal with this reality. They can record their observations into checklists and other artefacts, and take the lessons learned on each project out into the wider organization. A review team with a clear understanding of the processes it will follow and the assets it can bring to bear will be able to hit the ground running and project professionalism.
