Learning From Mistakes: How to Analyze Finished Projects

Any professional's portfolio contains a diverse range of projects, both simple and complex, expensive and low-budget, successful and unsuccessful. Mistakes can turn into experience and be a valuable asset, even if they do not look too good at first glance. But that does not always happen on its own. Sometimes you need to do some work before a failure becomes useful.  

How do we convert mistakes and misunderstandings into valuable skills, knowledge, and experience? How do we use the positive aspects of the project? Let's figure it out.

The Brief Stage

Any project starts with a brief. Even if your document is as structured, well-thought-out, and detailed as possible, all clients fill out briefs in different ways. Some of them do not describe their industry, forget to mention the size of their banners, or postpone filling out the terms of reference. What experience can you gain by analyzing the briefing stage of your projects?

Structure and questions in the brief

If the terms of reference are not enough, it is a sign that the document needs to be changed. Ideally, a separate, individual brief is drawn up for each task. In large companies, terms of reference are organized not only by tasks and departments that will work with the client but also by the industry of the request. Making errors in the brief or terms of reference is unpleasant, but it happens, which makes them important to analyze.

The amount of time required to complete projects

The timing of each stage of the project is determined by both parties. Still, when setting deadlines, people often miscalculate. Clients are also notorious for failing to keep to deadlines. However, it is the professional who will be blamed if a work is not finished in time. To avoid this issue, communicate. If taking two weeks to write a brief may harm the project, let the client know as soon as possible.

Legal reinforcement

Contracts are difficult to create, but they are necessary. In the professional world, a brief is a component of the contract. Both a client and specialist agree that the former filled out the terms of reference, and the latter accepted them. In legal documents, you can specify the customer’s requirements and your conditions — deadlines, the number of edits, and other subtleties. Try to make a helpful, well thought-out document that would assist in case of conflicts.

Personal participation and assistance in filling out the brief

Let's be honest: not all clients understand the questions of the brief, especially when it comes to specific professional issues. Many tasks have been ruined because the brief was too complicated for the customer and nobody explained it to them. But you can make the briefing stage as painless as possible for the client (and, eventually, yourself). Just help them and fill out some parts of the brief together. After all, a brief is a product of collaboration.

For each project you failed (or were not too successful at), analyze the briefing stage. What worked and what did not? Were there scheduling or time issues? Were the brief and terms of reference thought-out enough? These questions help in learning from your mistakes and the mistakes of the client that you did not fix.

Working on Projects

The brief is important, but it is also quite crucial to consider and analyze the work you did for a project. It usually includes multiple activities and stages, which are all opportunities to succeed — but which often bring failure. Consider analyzing the following aspects to see if you can turn your task into a learning experience.

Task Committee

When selecting specialists for a project, you may realize that even the strongest team can make mistakes or underperform. To prevent this from happening in the future, it is important to consider more than the professionalism of the team. There are also each specialist's interest in the industry, resilience, and the ability to work in a specific group. Creating a team is a complicated task, and many errors can be made during this stage. Be ready to analyze them and learn from them.

Each stage's timing and feedback

Clients can be difficult to work with because some of them do not feel like keeping to deadlines. They also often focus on small issues while forgetting to provide actually useful feedback. However, it is the professionals who will be held accountable for a failure. Therefore, professionals need to make their customer cooperate, and that is something many people learn the hard way.

There is an emotional component

If objective issues are resolved with the help of legal documents and discussions, then subjective factors of work are a little more complex. Try to track the emotional state of all participants during the project. How the client reacts to the team and the team to the client are important aspects of the project. Working with people means working with emotions, and that has to be embraced to avoid failures.

Coordination

Coordination both with clients and within the team is vital to the success of the task. As a result, it is worth analyzing in every project you work on, regardless of its success. Make sure to review the cases where there are more problems with coordination. Try to determine which communication channels are better. Improve your coordination in every project and watch failures become rare.

The Aftermath: Feedback

You do not have to conduct an analysis all on your own! You can ask other participants how the project went. Involve both the internal client (the employee who worked on the project) and the external one (who paid for the service). Find out what difficulties other participants faced, what they liked, and what caused discomfort. In addition to your own observations, you will have feedback. It will improve your chances of understanding what went wrong and what went right.

In Conclusion

Working on mistakes and improving the workflow is an important activity for any person and also any company. Different stages of the process can be singled out and analyzed for positive and negative events and outcomes. The beginning of the project (the brief) can be especially crucial, but errors can occur at any moment. And with some work, you can learn to avoid them.