End-of-project feedback: what carries over to the next project?
At the end of a project, teams can generally identify what worked and what did not. The management question is more specific: how should this feedback be organised so that a lesson is actually tested in the next project?
What the literature establishes
Scott I. Tannenbaum and Christopher P. Cerasoli (2013, Human Factors) synthesised research on individual and team debriefings and found an average performance benefit. These interventions involve more than receiving an opinion: they organise reflection on experience to prepare for subsequent action. This finding supports structured reflection, not every conversation held after a project.
Comparing experiences rather than compiling a list
Shmuel Ellis and Iris Davidi (2005, Journal of Applied Psychology) studied after-event reviews in a military training context. Their findings support examining successes as well as failures, rather than reviewing failures alone. The proposed mechanism is the development of mental models: reviewing experience helps clarify the conditions under which a particular way of working is effective.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that adding a debriefing to every project closure is enough. Yet a favourable average effect proves neither that all formats are equivalent nor that an articulated lesson will be usable in another situation. A recommendation such as “coordinate teams better” remains an intention unless it specifies an action and the conditions for applying it. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot guarantee
The studies synthesised cover different tasks, participants and interventions; the military study does not directly demonstrate what would happen in a Lausanne business. Improvement on an assessed task does not guarantee transfer to a different project with different constraints. In practice, satisfaction with the review and the number of lessons recorded are therefore insufficient evidence of learning.
A practical check in Lausanne
In Lausanne, SHR's “L'art du feedback” programme can use a review from a medtech company, a higher education institution, an international sports organisation or a scale-up in the Lake Geneva region as a practical exercise. The proposed protocol links each retained lesson to an observable action, a responsible person and a specific opportunity to test it in the next project. At the following review, calculate the proportion of actions actually tested among those for which a testing opportunity arose, requiring dated evidence rather than a statement of intent. This measure checks the transition from feedback to experimentation without claiming, on its own, to demonstrate a performance gain. To go further: explore the The Art of Feedback training in Lausanne, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: The Art of Feedback in Lausanne
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