Your project’s complete. Congratulations!

Now its time to reflect on what you have learned. What worked? What did not work?

Too often, engineers move from project to project without really thinking about what we have learned and how we can adjust behavior, techniques, and processes on the next project or assigned task.

By following the below three rules for closing out a project you and your team will learn and move forward

RULE 1: Reflect honestly on what you could have done better or differently.

I recently completed a project dealing with plant modifications related to flood protection features. It was full of technical challenges and the fact that it was my first project for this client made it even more challenging. What I could have done better and actions I will commit to on future projects:

• Spend more time up front developing a culture of accountability within my team
  This is especially important when a project is staffed with people who have never or infrequently worked together before. You cannot assume everybody has the same background and approach to personal accountability that you have, or that your last team had. I learned that you need to set the example and expectations early on a new project and spend time up front with the team creating a culture that reinforces desired behaviors.
• Ensure realistic schedules and stress quality over schedule
  Unless you believe the schedule is achievable and commit to it, you don’t have a chance to meet it. In addition, of course, the last thing you or your customer wants is to sacrifice quality for schedule. Therefore, the time to get buy-in is when schedules are being developed and before client commitments are made.
• Provide more effective coaching for lead engineers
  By lead engineer I am talking about the first line supervisor for engineers and designers developing engineering work products such as drawings, calculations, and specifications. It is a very important position and I think it is critical for me to make it a higher priority to help less experienced leads and aspiring leads learn to communicate better and put in place effective work control processes to deal with technical and productivity issues as they arise such that quality products on schedule are the norm.
• Understand client expectations
  With a new client, it is difficult to ensure their expectations are met because you are learning their expectations as you go! I learned that I must commit more time to communicating with my client counterparts and ask lots of questions about how they do things and what they expect in our deliverables, i.e., don’t assume.

RULE 2: Celebrate your team’s success by providing recognition for what went right.

Examples of what went right on my recent project are:

• Perseverance — we overcame many challenges and never gave up
• Self critical — we were not reluctant to identify mistakes and fix them
• Adapt to change — we had a number of changes in direction that tended to pull us off track. However, we did a remarkable job of staying focused and adjusting plans to adapt to the changes.

RULE 3: Followup to ensure the lessons learned from your last project are indeed being implemented going forward.

After you have reflected on what could have been done better and what went well it is important to build those lessons learned into your processes and protocols used on your next project. This is what continuous process improvement is all about. The saving grace about projects with problems (and most have problems) is that they make you better if you take the initiative to learn from them.

Well, those are my 3 rules for closing out a project. Please comment and let me know what you think and what additional thoughts you have on this topic.