Most teams run post-mortems. Few use them well.

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Happy New Year, dear readers! We’re excited to step into another year with you as we kick things off with a key driver of project performance: project post-mortems.

Most teams already run project post-mortems. Yet recurring delays, overruns, and delivery issues keep showing up portfolio after portfolio. Sounds familiar?

That’s because many post-mortems are treated as documentation exercises, something done at the end to explain what happened. High-performing organizations treat post-mortem analysis differently. They use it as a performance tool: a structured way to improve delivery predictability, reduce risk, and strengthen execution across projects.

In this issue, we explore why project post-mortem analysis is a MUST for every project team , and how it can be used to improve project performance.

Let's dive in!

Let’s start from the basics. Project post-mortem analysis is a structured review of what happened during a project, why it happened, and what should change as a result. Its roots go back to military after-action reviews and later aerospace, construction, and quality management practices, where learning from failure was critical. Today, post-mortems have evolved from end-of-project formalities into ongoing learning tools used throughout delivery to improve project performance and reduce repeat issues.

📊 Why post-mortems matter for project performance

Poor project performance rarely comes from a single failure. It usually comes from patterns: unclear expectations, weak handoffs, overloaded teams, fragile plans, or incentives that quietly reward the wrong behavior.

A well-run post-mortem surfaces those patterns. It connects outcomes to root causes and separates what happened from why it happened. Most importantly, it turns individual experience into organizational insight that future projects can actually use.

When post-mortems are done well, they directly support:

• More realistic planning and estimation

• Fewer repeat risks and surprises

• Better decision-making under pressure

• Continuous improvement across teams and portfolios

🧐 What modern post-mortems do differently

Modern post-mortem analysis has evolved far beyond a single meeting at project close.

High-performing teams:

• Run post-mortems continuously, not just at the end (after major phases, incidents, or milestones)

• Focus on systems, not blame, looking at workflows, decision paths, and constraints rather than individuals

• Use data alongside opinions, combining timelines, metrics, and delivery data with team input

• Track follow-up actions, assigning owners and deadlines instead of stopping at “lessons learned”

This shift from retrospective reporting to performance improvement is where real value is created.

✅ How to make post-mortems actually improve performance

If post-mortems haven’t moved the needle for your projects, the issue is usually execution, not intent. A few practical principles make the difference:

• Define the performance question upfront
  Don’t ask “What went wrong?” Ask “What slowed delivery, increased risk, or improved outcomes, and why?”

• Limit scope, but go deep
  Focus on the 2–3 moments that had the biggest performance impact instead of reviewing everything superficially.

• Translate insights into actions
  Every insight should lead to a concrete change: a checklist update, a process tweak, a decision rule, or a planning assumption.

• Make learning reusable
  If insights aren’t captured in a consistent format and shared, they won’t influence the next project.

We’ve explored this topic in more detail in a recent blog post, which also includes a practical post-mortem template and checklist we use to help teams move beyond generic “lessons learned.” 

The goal isn’t more documentation, but clearer insights, consistent analysis across projects, and a better link between what’s learned and what actually changes next time.

This month’s can't-miss resources:

🗞️News - PMI’s new global research shows that a growing gap between strategy and execution is undermining transformation success

🎙Podcast vault - How to manage projects like investments (not just deliverables)

💬The Deliverable Reddit community - Join other readers & ask all your questions about project management, project performance, and operations

Thank you for reading! See you next month

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