Connecting Practice

After Action Review (AAR) is a tool that can enable others to provide constructive, directly actionable, and/or on-the-spot feedback in a non-threatening way within a process of participation, cooperation, and involvement.

Each time an incorrect performance is observed, it should be immediately corrected so that it will not interfere with future projects. During major projects, it is not always easy to notice incorrect performances. Indeed, in many cases, the correct performances will be unknown for these projects as they are learning projects for others. That is why the AAR should be planned at the end of each project so that others can be enabled to provide feedback; others can be given an opportunity to share their views, comments, suggestions, ideas, issues, and/or concerns; others can be enabled to understand why things happened during the progression of the process; others can be enabled to learn lessons and grow from their experience; and others can be enabled to identify innovation and/or generate solution, suggestions, and ideas for the improvement of their next project.

Guideline: Perform AAR after each project.

Climates:
1. Enabling participants to obtain mutual trust from each other.
2. Enabling participants to speak freely.
3. Enabling participants to give commitment to learning.
4. Enabling participants to have an innovative behavior as the norm.
5. Enabling participants to do the right thing.
6. Remind participants that problem solving should be pragmatic.
7. Remind participants that they should NOT be preoccupied with status, territory, or second guessing “what the leader will think.”

Responsible: Team Lead
1. Perform Risk Analysis to solve potential project stopping issue(s). Note that the lack of resource is one of the root of many other problems. Identifying and examining the risk(s) at the start of the project would avoid these problems before the team set off for the project.
2. Ask all participants to keep a note of problems, issues, and/or concerns that they encountered during the project. They should keep a note of successes as well as failures.
3. Prepare, plan, and appoint a facilitator (an independent person) to facilitate the AAR meeting. This includes identifying and re-affirming the need and/or purpose of the AAR meeting.

Responsible: Facilitator
4. After project release, establish the “ground truth” of the completed project by revisiting the objectives and deliverables of the project and sending email request to all participants a day before the AAR meeting asking them to list 10 successes, failures, and problems that occurred during the project. This includes choosing the participants and writing their position titles and responsibilities. The participants should provide the following information:

• Project name
• Name, position, and objective of person submitting the information
• Function Name + [Success that was made (a brief statement of the identified task and/or activity that went well) + What were the intended results? + What were the actual results that answer why the identified task and/or activity went well? + Who's to credit for this? + Can other teams benefit from doing the same?]1:m
• Function Name + [Failure that was made (a brief statement of the identified task and/or activity that went not ok) + What were the intended results? + What were the actual results? + Get explanations that answer why the identified task and/or activity were taken, why the failure happened, what caused the results, or why did the actual results happen that way? + Who's the owner for this? + What suggestion can be made? + Can other teams be affected from doing the same?]1:m
• Function Name + [A brief statement of the identified task and/or activity affected by a problem? + Problem + Who's responsible for this? + Who should be responsible? + What's the identified root causes? Was it a gap in the process? + What's the identified solutions? + What is the consequence of not solving this problem? The worst consequence? Most probable? + Can other teams be affected from doing the same? + Escalation Point]1:m
• Function Name + [a brief statement of the identified issues and/or concerns that surround the project for resolution]1:m

Note: The participants should ask their teams for feedback on the issues before completing the form.

5. Define scope of AAR meeting by documenting and/or putting together a list of the 10 most common successes, failures, and problems before the AAR meeting. Note that the information will form the AAR meeting agendas. This includes creating a list of probing open-ended questions, establishing the priority of the items, estimating the amount of time on each item, and if necessary, setting for limited discussion to arrive at the appropriateness of the selected items on the agenda.

6. Calling AAR meeting as soon as possible and inviting all the participants in advance. This includes determining time and location parameters for the AAR meeting and arranging for action minutes to be taken (minutes of the meeting) by one of the participants. Note that every effort should be made to get all of the participants into one room for the meeting. If this is not possible then video conferencing should be used. It is difficult to discuss sensitive issues when you can’t see the person you’re talking too.

7. At the getting started of the AAR meeting, give a short introduction, make announcements first and quickly, present the theme, and state the scope and other limitation.

Tips or Guidelines

• Create the right climate that is one of trust, openness, and commitment to learning in the AAR meeting. Present some rules, if appropriate.
• Make clear that the purpose of the AAR meeting is to help future projects run more smoothly by identifying the learning points from this project.

8. At the AAR meeting, share the information, summarize the key events, and/or decide to construct a flow chart of what happened.

9. In the failure discussion, explore the gap between the intended and actual results in order to identify causes and commit the team to a few key “sustains” and “improves” for the next cycle of the project. Brainstorm the “gaps” to generate worthwhile ideas from the theme to arrive on something that a group needs to understand better and make a decision about.

Tips or Guidelines for Facilitator

• Ensure that everyone has an opportunity to contribute.
• Strive to allow participants to offer previously unspoken issues and/or concerns by calling for questions, clarifications, and concerns.
• Strive to allow participants to offer solutions, answers, insights, comments, and/or ideas rather than you offering them.
• Remain unbiased throughout the AAR review.
• Allow NOT blame and/or personal attacks.
• Handle complaints positively.

Tips or Guidelines for Team Lead

• Address issues and/or concerns from the point of view of what should have been done to make the situation better, what process should we change to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.

10. In the problem discussion, begin with presenting problem. Then allow the participants to brainstorm the problems to generate worthwhile solution from the theme to arrive on something that a group needs to understand better and make a decision about. Also allow the participants to evaluate and select solution and generate alternative solutions. Lastly, develop an action plan. Define the top 15 actions to be completed and identify who will do each action or who will delegate where necessary. Note that the top 15 action items should have dates agreed for when they will be completed. The remaining actions will be lower priority but the team should be aware that not completing these actions will cause problems on projects in the future.

11. In the success discussion, begin with presenting the report and things to the team what they can do well allowing them to reflect and think on impact of the project. Then ask ‘what the team could do better to improve the team’s performance as the team continue to work together?’ or ‘what needs improvement that the team could do better next time?’ Here you may explore alternative courses of actions that might have been more effective. This includes identifying issues and/or concerns that surround the theme for resolution.

12. Ask ‘what lessons can be learned from the experience?’ Here you may press participants for specific, repeatable advice that others could apply in similar situations.

13. At closure, ensure that everyone feels fully heard before leaving the AAR meeting. Here you may ask them for a numerical rating of the project: ‘looking back, how satisfied are you with the project: marks out of ten?’ Their answer would enable you to ask them, ‘what would have made it a ten for you?’ This includes appreciating any ideas that have come up and encouraging the participants to communicate more ideas that will come up with possibilities that work as they continue to ponder about the subject (failures, problems, issues, concerns, etc.).

14. [Optional] 1 hour should be scheduled at the end of the AAR meeting for an Executive Summary. A conference call will be held between the participants in the AAR review meeting and any other interested parties. The top 10 problems, 15 issues, and 15 action plan should be presented at this conference meeting.

15. Give closing comments and agreement on next steps. This includes announcing that a discussion must be continued in another meeting - a discussion extension with several options to address problems, issues, and/or concerns.

16. Record the AAR. Things like: Conclusions; lessons and guidelines for the future; some background information about the project to help put these guidelines into a meaningful context; the names of the people involved for future reference; and any key documents such as project plans or reports.

17. Share the completed document to all parties involved.

18. Follow-up on the top 15 action items and ensure that they are completed.

AAR is a working document and should evolve as others learn more from the AAR process. I am confident that you can develop your AAR knowledge and skills further in your field of expertise.