Did that feature work? I don't think anyone checked.
Nobody checks whether it worked
Decisions get made and results come in, but nobody connects the two. Lessons from reviews get written down and never change anything. So mistakes repeat, and lucky successes teach the wrong lesson.
- There's no step for looking back at whether a decision worked.
- The same mistakes come up across projects.
- Actions from past reviews sit open.
Who: whoever owns this workflow. Look at: three decisions from the last year that came with an expected result. Ask: "Did anyone compare what we expected with what happened?" Count: the actions from the last review, and how many were completed. You're probably looking at this pattern if nobody compared and most actions are still open. Probably not if results get checked and the actions close.
The plan keeps going after the evidence turned. In that pattern, the evidence is in and being ignored. In this pattern, nobody is collecting it.
After the next cycle, spend a few minutes on what we keep and what we change.
Ask two separate questions. Was the process sound? Did it work out?
Ask two questions. What did we know at each step? What would have caught this earlier? Skip the full timeline.
A combined analysis of 46 samples found that structured reviews after the work improved performance by about 25%, with larger gains when someone facilitated them (Tannenbaum and Cerasoli, 2013). Established.