Project Post-Mortem

Project Post-Mortem Meeting and Report Template

If you’ve been a part of any project, you know things don’t always go as planned. Even if you finished on time and under budget, there’s a good chance you can always find better ways to run projects.

The post-pandemic world has made managing projects even harder. Team configurations constantly change—both internally and at client organizations—with new people in different seats. And with more communication happening virtually, no wonder it’s tough to build the strong connections you need to make projects succeed.

That’s why it’s more important than ever to carve out time and space to gather feedback from your team and figure out ways you can work better together.

The best way to assess your work is to conduct a project post-mortem meeting. Let’s take a closer look at what a post-mortem meeting is in project management.

What is a post-mortem meeting?

A post-mortem meeting brings all key project team members together at the end of a project to examine what went well and what can be improved upon to make the next project more successful.

This gives you an opportunity to celebrate both individual and team wins, while also reflecting on how you can improve project workflow, team collaboration, and client management.

As a project manager, your job is to facilitate a useful meeting and then take any feedback and, working alongside others, implement positive change. You also need to pass any accolades along to leadership and the larger team.

What is the purpose of a project post-mortem?

The core reason to conduct a post-mortem analysis is to continue getting better at project delivery. Taking time to talk about what didn’t work allows you to prioritize issues and brainstorm ideas for improving as both a team and individuals.

If you’re on the fence about whether you really need to do a project post-mortem, I get it. The budget is over at this point, and your team is moving on to other projects.

As a project manager, though, it’s up to you to educate your team and leaders about the importance of this meeting. Let’s take a look at some additional benefits of a post-mortem review.

Celebrate wins

Everyone wants to know their work is valued and appreciated by their team members, so don’t miss a chance to reflect on the work that’s been accomplished.

With difficult projects, it’s easy to forget everything you did successfully. Taking a moment to recognize all the awesome stuff you did together is a great way to boost morale as you head into the next project.

Improve communication

Post-mortem reviews help you learn how to collaborate better as a team, highlighting where you worked well together and where communication broke down.

Transparent and honest sharing builds mutual understanding and brings you closer together as a team. This is especially critical in workplaces that rely on virtual meetings and Slack relationships to get things done.

Build empathy

Sharing perspectives as a team creates opportunities to look at the project from other vantage points. Understanding how certain challenges affect team members differently enables you to work together to adjust and address issues you may not have been aware of before.

Provide closure

Sometimes it’s important to have space to simply get something off your chest. A good, open post-mortem discussion gives everyone the opportunity to say their peace and move on. This is especially critical for projects that go sideways.

What’s the difference between a retrospective and post-mortem meeting?

If you’ve ever heard of a retrospective in project management, you might be curious how it differs from a post-mortem.

In my experience, my colleagues and I tended to use these terms interchangeably. That had a lot to do with the fact that we used more Waterfall and hybrid processes vs. Scrum and Agile.

All that being said, there is technically a difference between a project post-mortem and a retrospective. It basically comes down to the process and rituals you set for your project.

Here are the main differences:

• Timing and scope: Post-mortems occur at the end of a fully completed project while retrospectives occur at the end of each sprint or iteration. This means you’ll review the entire project at a post-mortem meeting vs just the most recent sprint.
• Attendees: Retrospectives include a smaller group which is just the project team on the current sprint. A post-mortem should span all project team members and management stakeholders across the entire project .‍
• Focus: Since post-mortems happen after project completion, they typically focus on what went wrong and fixing it for the next project. Retrospectives, on the other hand, focus on improving the quality and effectiveness for the next sprint.