Lessons Learned

Every firm pays tuition: the detail that got redrawn three times, the consultant scope nobody carried, the clause that would have covered the claim. The tuition is only wasted if nothing is written down. This keeps the log, and, more importantly, reads it back at the moment the same situation comes around again.

Workflow

Step 1. Bootstrap if needed

Check whether docs/practice/lessons.md exists. If not, copy assets/lessons-template.md there. If the project has no docs/ folder at all, confirm before creating one. Offices that keep one log across projects point this at that file instead; ask which.

Step 2. Capture an entry

One incident, six fields, your words:

• What happened, concretely: documents, dates, the sequence.
• Effect: what it cost or saved: money, time, a relationship, as you state it.
• Cause, stated about the process, not the person.
• Next time: the change that would have caught it, specific enough to act on.
• Tags: phase (programming, CDs, bidding, CA, closeout, ...) and topic (consultants, contracts, envelope, drawings, client, fees, ...), from the words you use; reuse the log's existing tags before coining new ones.
• Project and date.

At a project close, offer the prompt set: what would you do again, what would you never do again, what surprised you, what did the client teach you. Record only what comes back.

Step 3. Read back

The half that earns the writing. On "starting a project", "starting CA", or any stated situation: match tags and words, and return the entries that apply, whole, with their project and date. Oldest lessons included; age is not decay here. If nothing matches, say so rather than stretching a loosely related entry into relevance.

Step 4. Notice patterns, carefully

When a reading returns three or more entries sharing a tag, say so, count them, and stop. "Four entries tagged consultants + scope" is information; what it means is the reader's call.

Rules

• Entries verbatim. Tighten grammar if asked; never tighten the meaning.
• Causes are about process. Ask to restate, do not restate silently.
• Read back whole entries, with project and date, not summaries; the detail is where the lesson lives.
• Reuse tags. A log where the same topic wears five tags cannot be read back.
• Never delete or archive. The log only grows, and that is the point.

Anti-patterns

• Writing the lesson yourself because the close-out meeting ran long.
• Sanding a costly mistake into a neutral observation nobody will heed.
• Summarizing five entries into a policy the user never stated.
• Skipping the read-back at kick-off, which converts the whole log into a diary.
• Coining a new tag per entry until every lesson is filed alone.

Resources

• assets/lessons-template.md — the log this creates, empty.

No reference files. The lessons come from your projects, not from here.