The effectiveness of management of lessons learned from Botswana Tourism Organisation (BTO) projects

Abstract

Learning from past projects, be it to make the most of good practice or to avoid repetition of past mistakes, is one of the major success factors for continuous project accomplishment in organisations. Many researchers and project management practitioners underscore the need for organisations to effectively manage project learning, to ensure that organisations’ harvest lessons and apply them for the improvement of subsequent projects. That notwithstanding many organisations do not benefit from project learning, either because they do not have clear project learning processes in place, or the processes are not effectively implemented. Botswana Tourism Organisation (BTO) is one organisation that executes part of its mandate through the execution of construction projects in partnership with identified communities. This research embarked on assessing the effectiveness of the management of lessons learned by BTO for its construction projects. The research is a case study of five (5) projects that BTO has constructed since the organisation was established. The research was undertaken through a detailed review of the projects ‘documentation, distribution of questionnaires, follow-up interviews as well as focus group discussions with selected respondents. The results were analysed using various statistical, including rubric assessments, and non-statistical methods. The findings suggest that management of lessons learned for the projects is largely ineffective since some lessons learned processes i.e. capturing, storage and dissemination are minimally developed, while other processes i.e. analysis and infusion are virtually non-existent. Recommendations on key processes to be improved as well as key success factors for improvement have been put forth.