Unlocking Project Success: A Comprehensive Analysis of Lessons Learned Processes

Project management is considered a strategic area for the utilization of knowledge, skills, specific tools, and techniques applied to deliver something of value to people. When it comes to the efficiency of the project, one of the main gaps identified in the current literature is related to the lack of reuse of lessons learned from previous projects in current and future projects. As such, one way to overcome these challenges is through the application of lessons-learned processes. Lessons learned is a well-known approach used to support knowledge gained during project execution, focused on how project events were addressed or how they should be addressed in the future, to improve future project performance. This research focuses on bringing attention to the importance of using lessons learned to improve projects and organizational performance. The history of the topic and its main elements were covered, as well it was pointed out the existence of barriers and facilitators inherent to the use of lessons. Additionally, the contribution of the use of lessons on the project performance and on increasing organizational competitiveness was also identified. In this investigation, the research of relevant papers on the Web of Science and further application on Bibliometrix, are aligned with a quantitative research methodology and a bibliometric study, that has the goal to demonstrate the actuality of the theme as well as to identify relevant articles, their key findings, and established connection networks in the scientific literature related to lessons learned in projects.