Jul 13

After Action Reports for Projects…Going Civilian the Army Way

The Business Side

I learned a lot of useful project management techniques in hanging out with the Army ROTC folks. I know some people will disagree, but I think the army actually teaches its officers a lot of great management techniques — they’ve got to since they’re placing 21-25 year olds in high stress leadership positions where they’re in charge of a number of people with various skill levels, personalities, and backgrounds.

One of things I try to do, usually unofficially, is to do what they called an AAR (After Action Report) after I finish a project. In the military world, you perform AARs in a group setting after a mission and discuss what went right, what went wrong, what techniques and processes should be kept, and how to improve in the future.

If you’re honest and comfortable with the people you’re working with, this can be a great tool for process development and lead to smoother, better product development and launch in the future.

Here’s how I’ve conducted them in the past. Get everyone in a room, and start off listing a couple of things that went right — no matter how badly the project went. There’s a three point minimum here. I find that starting off with positives puts everyone into a more open mindset and helps them become less upset during the next phase, negatives.

In the next phase, talk about things that went wrong or things that can be improved. Spend as much time as you need here but don’t let it degrade into complaining or riding points into the ground. The goal is to find out what went wrong and how to improve it, there shouldn’t be any blame, attacking, or obsessing over any one point here.

Finally, go back and find a few more positive things. Ideally, your positives should either match or exceed the negatives. It is a lot easier to spot things that went wrong than it is things that went right, so this may require some initial coaching but once people get the hang of it and see that they have a voice in improving things they really will get into it.

Naturally, the most important step is after the AAR meeting where you analyze what is said and figure out how to apply changes to improve the processes in the future.

I would also like to mention that AARs sometimes devolve into day-long affairs. Speaking from experience, don’t let this happen. If you do, one of two things is going to happen. The first is that you’re going to get too much information and you won’t be able to make use of it all - and then people become frustrated in the long run. The second possibility is that people become frustrated that its taking so long, tempers can flare, feelings can get hurt, and then you don’t get anything useful. I like to keep them between an hour and hour and half at most.