Anbari, Frank T.; Carayannis, Elias G.; Voetsch, Robert J.: Post-project reviews as a key project management competence; in: Technovation, Vol. 28 (2008), No. 10, pp. 633-643.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2007.12.001
George Santayana was the wise guy who said: „Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.“ At university I learned that 2 strategies exist to make an organisation remember it’s past – Internalisation and Codification. While internalisation usually happens anyway and an organisation only needs to keep track on who did which projects in the past, so that he can be interviewed, the codification bit is tricky.
Anbari et al. describe which interest are held by which stakeholder group and how that is going to impact any knowledge management or lack thereof. The authors also outline useful techniques and critical aspects, plus when project reviews are most usefully held during the project lifecycle.
Furthermore, the paper discusses where post-project reviews fit into the project life cycle and project management processes. It assesses how such reviews can assist an organization in improving the manner in which its projects are conceived, planned, implemented, reported, and evaluated.
Finally Anbari et al. outline a 3-fold growth model for organisations
(1) Vicious circle = no real reviews
(2) Functional circle = reviews which no one knows about
(3) Virtuous circle = reviews everybody knows.