LESSONS LEARNED WORKING GROUP

Session 2 Notes - 10/21/2008

MEETING ATTENDEES:

Micci Bogard, Greg Bronson, Greg Busby, RJ Davies, Jean Gustafson, Graham Hall, Stephanie Herrick (co-Facilitator), Butch Labrecque (co-Facilitator), Ned LaCelle, Benoit McNicoll, Greg Menzenski, Christine O'Brien, Ron Parks, Nathan Reimer, Andy Slusar, Casper Vanwyk

ADMINISTRIVIA:

• IS Activity Code - 1853: Lessons Learned Working Group
• Confluence Site - https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/LLWG/Home
• LLWG Session 3 – TBA

Agenda:

• Review Agenda
• Purpose of the Meeting & Tie back to Session 1
• "Report Back" presentations (15 min each) & Group Feedback (10 min each)
• Closing

PURPOSE OF MEETING:

Share & discuss working groups' results (potential solutions to top LL problems) and present strategies for implementing the solution(s) to the group in order to create and improve LL practices & tools

INTRODUCTIONS, NEW EXPECTATIONS AND TIE-BACK TO KICKOFF MEETING:

We had 3 new members join us: Greg Busby, Jean Gustafson & Graham Hall (Welcome, Jean, to the Sharing Outcomes team, Greg to the Best Practices team and Graham to the Facilitation team). 

Two new expectations were added to the list:

• Share LL's to take back to other PM's/projects
• Move LL's from project to project in order to start each project "slightly higher"

We reviewed the Expectations expressed in Session 1 and identified themes between these and the newly expressed Expectations: Learning, Applying, Benefits, Common (repository), Best (practices), Capturing, Future (projects).

• Get the "Cornell view" on LLs
• Learn from others, apply to other projects
• "we talk about it", but how do we make sure that others benefit from it?
• Learn common/"best" way to do LLs
• Discover if LLs can be "generalized"
• Put best practices in place & perhaps develop a common repository
• We don't currently have a way to capture LLs (repeatable process)
• How can we work LLs into best practices
• Find out if there is a way for the PM to find "balance" conducting & participating in LLs as well as to apply LLs to future projects
• Learn and hear others' experiences
• Observe & learn how to conduct LL sessions
• Can we combine LLs with something else to make it more valuable/practical?
• Support problem ID & LL action items/next steps in order to benefit future PMs/projects
• How to capture LLs, collaborate w/ the info & be more proactive with (acting on) LLs

We also reviewed Session 1 evaluation feedback: some positive feedback – thank you! – and some suggestions for improvement (more time, more time for intro's, team building activity was unnecessary, needed coffee). 

We discussed how many of the Expectations expressed in Session 1 would be addressed (to some degree) in Session 2 and that we tried to work in folk's evaluation feedback from Session 1 into Session 2's agenda.  Evaluations will be handed out at each session.  Looking ahead to Session 3, we will make every effort to incorporate participant's feedback.

Report back & group feedback

Each team was asked to present their working group results with the larger group and allow time to collect feedback.  The report-back format was as follows:
  1.       Introduce work group team members for the benefit of new LLWG participants
  2.       Provide clear definition of problem(s) addressed by the work group
  3.       Present the proposed solution(s)
  4.       Suggest strategies for implementing the solution(s)
  5.       Recommend next steps (action plan)

 "Facilitation" Team (Top Problems ID#1) – Ron, Micci, Lisa, GregB, Irina, Graham

Solutions:

•          Meeting Checklists

•          Pre-meeting Surveys

Feedback:

-          <ask each team to record theirs>

"Best Practices" Team (Top Problems ID#2) – RJ, Nathan, GregM, Andy, Greg

Solutions:

•          SIG & Process

Feedback:

-          <ask each team to record theirs>

 "Sharing Outcomes" Team (Top Problems ID#4) – Sue, Ned, Benoit, Christine, Casper, Jean

Solutions:

•          Repository

•          SForge Tracker

Feedback:

-          <ask each team to record theirs>

CLOSING/NEXT STEPS

• We recapped progress to date and illustrated how the LLWG teams and deliverables are naturally interdependent:

• Teams were asked to meet to incorporate feedback received from the larger group into their solutions
• Steph & Butch will post meeting notes to Confluence, plan Session 3 (agenda TBA)
• Post-meeting evaluation
  

SESSION 2 LESSON LEARNED: formally facilitated, non-projectized working groups are very powerful!