The work-reflection-learning cycle - Department of Computer and ...

The work-reflection-learning cycle in SE student projects: Use of collaboration tools
collaboratively identify and evaluate (using shared spreadsheets and whiteboards) the
challenges of teamwork in that phase of their project. The work of Xiao and colleagues
exemplifies the use of a structured approach to reflection with the aid of a defined
procedure, a shared workspace and specified external representations.
Turning to project work in industry, „lessons learned‟ – key project experiences with
some general business relevance for future projects – has recently been incorporated as
a concept in the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK)
(ProjectManagementInstitute 2008). This points to a general acknowledgement in the
project management field that learning from project experience needs to focus on a
useful outcome. Further, to identify lessons learned from a project process, it is not only
the „what‟, „where‟ and „how many‟ questions that need to be addressed, but also the
„why‟ and „how‟ questions (Schindler and Eppler 2003). To achieve this it may be
necessary to tap into participants‟ experience to try to learn from the tacit aspects of
project work (Eraut and Hirsch 2007).
Project debriefings are structured approaches to reflection intended to help projects and
organizations capture and use experience data from projects (Schindler and Eppler
2003). Schindler and Eppler examined a large body of empirical data on project-centred
learning in various types of organizations. They found that current practices, as
compared to current theoretical insights, require “significant improvements with regard
to the format, process, and use of lessons learned”. Schindler and Eppler list the
following success factors for gaining from lessons learned in project debriefing
workshops: 1) Have the entire project team regularly capture important project
experiences after major milestones, 2) Have an external, neutral moderator of the
debriefing workshops, 3) Aid the collection and structuring of lessons learned by a
graphical representation in the form of a timeline and document the workshop in a
poster format visible for all involved 4) Ensure that individual experiences are evaluated
and analyzed in collective and interactive sessions, and 5) Gain commitment from
gathered insights in the form of action consequences (i.e. what to do and by whom).
In the Software Engineering industry, the prevalence and cost of project overruns and
failures (Keil et al. 2000) means the motivation to have teams and organizations learn
from experience is strong. Efforts to achieve such learning may be integrated into
predefined work processes and supported by tool functionality for collecting and
providing experience data. The idea of experience factories (Basili and Caldiera 1995)
reflects a similar idea. In other settings, as in agile software development (Dybå and
Dingsøyr 2008), learning from experience may be more informal, taking place in faceto-face
project meetings and retrospective reflection sessions. Project retrospectives
(Derby et al. 2006; Kerth 2001) in agile SE, conducted at the end of project phases or
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