Postmortem: Never Leave a Project without It

improvement suggestions from completed projects and works even in small-and medium-size companies that cannot afford extensive KM investments. However, PMA has been mainly advocated for situations such as completion of large projects, learning from success, or recovering from failure. 2–4 When used appropriately, PMA ensures that team members recognize and remember what they learned during a project. Individuals share their experiences with the team and communicate them to other project groups. Additionally, PMA identifies improvement opportunities and provides a means to initiate sustained change. We have applied a lightweight approach to PMA in several projects 5,6 by focusing on a few vital principles: I PMA should be open for participation from the entire team and other project stakeholders. I Goals can—but need not—provide a focus for analysis. I The PMA process comprises three phases: preparation, data collection, and analysis. For each phase, team members can apply a number of fairly simple methods, such as the KJ method (after Japanese ethnologist Jiro Kawakita) 7 that collects and structures the data from a group of people. Preparation When we conduct PMA in software companies , two software process improvement group members work as facilitators together with two to all project team members. Facili-tators organize the analysis, steer the discussion , and document the results. They can be employees in the company where the PMA is conducted or external, as we are. External fa-cilitators often have an advantage performing the PMA because participants regard them as more neutral and objective. However, they might not know the company as well as internal facilitators, so preparation is important. During the preparation phase, we walk through the project history to better understand what has happened. We review all available documents, such as the work breakdown structure, project plans, review reports, and project reports. We also determine a goal for the PMA. Although primarily used for large projects and companies, postmortem analysis also offers a quick and simple way to initiate knowledge management in small-or medium-size software projects.