One of the key strategies to ensure "lessons learned" are actually learned is effective collaboration and communication. As you touched on in your post, the first step to this is adequate documentation throughout the project. This way, no key details are emitted or forgotten. Once these documents have been generated, the challenge is to actually implement them. One way to ease this process would be to use a central database. That way, any future projects with similarities would be able to access your notes. Another key aspect to consider is the culture of the company. More senior team members can act as mentors for more junior persons. This will allow knowledge to spread naturally, and also create a company culture that focuses on constant improvement. 

A great way to capture lessons learned is by surveying the people working on and observing the project. One benefit of a mid project survey is that you can identify and correct issues before they become a real problem

A successful project manager will utilize the following strategies:

• Decide on the metrics you want to document for your reports. These can be expected outcomes vs. results, actionable items, or opportunities for building upon the lessons from previous projects. 
• Organize these responses into a document that’s easy to read and reference. These documents should later be used to create your lessons learned report(s). 
• Collect and store these documents for reference in future projects. These should be stored on a cloud server or a shared drive so that they are accessible for future reference to all members of the team at any time.

As @akshatha you mentioned another excellent way to capture comments from the team is to hold lessons learned meetings, sometimes called a post-mortem. Lessons learned meetings can occur at any point during a project. During the meeting, the team should share feedback about what went well and what needs improvement. These meetings are also an effective team-building activity, as they are more collaborative than conducting individual surveys. Involve all stakeholders while preparing the lessons learned. Be sure to include everyone, including all relevant stakeholders, while preparing the lessons learned, whether you prepare the list during or after the project. This will help ensure that all the lessons are captured in the document. Share your lessons learned with other project teams. Consider holding regular brainstorming sessions with the team to unearth lessons that are valuable to the project.

Lesson learnt report, write a step by step detailed report. Consider the audience of this report, lessons learned and their importance to the audience, summarize, distribute and store the report.

To apply lesson learned ,

1) Every new project should require the team assembling to review all available lessons pertaining to the task directly or indirectly.

2) In the case of a multiphase project, the project team and management should be required to review the lessons learned from the previous phase and to act on them by continuing what went well and correcting what went wrong.

3) Lessons should be integrated into the risk management effort as a tool for identifying risk areas and ways to mitigate them.

4) Lessons learned are an invaluable source of feedback for the process of continuous improvement. 

The key lies in making lessons learned an integral part of your project culture, not just an afterthought. The true value of lessons learned isn't in the documentation but in the application. 

Keeping track of the lessons learned throughout a project is a perfect way to work on similiar projects in the future or on how to better navigate similar issues found in later projects. It also helps to identify who on the project team is well-equipped to handle certain tasks if that same project ever has a second or additional phase. This helps project members themselves gain confidence in their abilities and allow them to become specialized in a given area where the company can depend on them to work on similar items in the future. This in turn boosts team morale and can improve efficiency on projects moving forward. 

At the end of a project, having a "reflection session" can be very useful. In this session, the team can sit together in a relaxed setting and share what they think went well and what didn't. For instance, if a team was working on launching a new product and faced issues with meeting launch dates, they could discuss each problem and think of ways to avoid these in the future. This informal setting helps people feel comfortable sharing their true thoughts, which makes the lessons more meaningful and easier to remember.

Another great approach is to create a "lessons log" that is accessible to everyone in the company. Whenever someone encounters a problem or finds a good solution during a project, they can add it to this log. This is like a live document that grows and improves over time. For example, a marketing team that finds a new, effective way to track campaign results can add this method to the log. This helps not just the current team but also others in the company who might face similar issues, ensuring that everyone benefits from each other's experiences.

As much as learning from mistakes is important for future projects, it should also be important to use the lessons learned in real-time for decision makings during the project, not just as something to review afterward. If certain patterns emerge mid-project, like repeated incidents of unclear role responsibilities, teams should be able to reference past lessons at the moment and use them to justify corrections to the current strategy. Lessons learned should be included in the decision-making project throughout the project's lifecycle, using stuff like project dashboards, or linking them to risk indicators in order to have them be more active roles in the project.

The success of a project largely depends on the closing phase. This phase is critical for generating insights that can lead to new ideas for improving or evolving the final product. Future project teams should gather insights from past projects to use as a reference. If relevant information is missing or insufficiently detailed, it may be necessary to reevaluate the outcomes of those earlier projects.

Project closing involves ensuring that all requirements have been met. First, verify that all work aligns with contract closeout, confirming that project deliverables—such as procurement audits, product verifications, and updates to records—are complete. Second, ensure that all agreed-upon project management processes were followed. For medical device design, the design transfer must guarantee that proper development to production occurred, along with adherence to design controls in manufacturing.

Lastly, formal recognition of the project's completion is essential. This includes documenting the entire project lifecycle in a manner that meets the requirements for manufacturing the product. Therefore, the closing phase of a previous project serves as a foundation for the continuation and innovation of the product, ultimately leading to more effective and efficient project management processes.

To ensure that insights from past projects lead to tangible enhancements rather than being overlooked, teams must integrate lessons learned into their project life cycle. A practical approach is to connect these lessons to the planning stage of upcoming projects, using them as reference points when defining timelines, allocating resources, or evaluating risks. Ensuring this information is easily reachable—via searchable knowledge bases, shared dashboards, or project templates—motivates teams to refer to and utilize past insights. Regular post-mortem or retrospective meetings should not only gather feedback but also designate responsibility for implementing follow-up actions, thus guaranteeing that lessons result in concrete process improvements. Furthermore, organizations can nurture a continuous improvement culture by acknowledging teams that apply lessons learned and by routinely assessing the positive impact of these changes. When lessons are regarded as more than a checkbox and treated as tools for smarter execution, they transform into valuable assets instead of mere archived documents. How does your team currently document and reflect on lessons learned, and do you believe they truly influence subsequent projects?

In order to ensure that past project insights lead to real improvements, it is important to continuously track and categorize lessons learned. Tracking this throughout a project rather than leaving it until the very end would reduce the chance that it is forgotten during the closing stage. It is also advantageous to categorize these lessons learned so they can be easily applied to future projects. Sometimes, it might seem more time consuming to search for applicable lessons learned from past projects than to just do the project without those resources. Categorizing lessons learned when they are written would mitigate this problem and make the process more efficient. 

Usually projects that start off will consider similar projects that were executed beforehand and learn about what worked well and what didn't. Otherwise something that could be implemented is a dashboard of projects that were completed with supporting documents and statements of risks, and lessons learned.

Capturing and applying lessons learned during the project closing phase is a vital practice in project management, particularly in medical device development, as it drives continuous improvement and enhances future project outcomes. By systematically documenting both successes and challenges, teams can identify process inefficiencies, refine workflows, and mitigate recurring risks. Throughout the project lifecycle, it is beneficial to track lessons learned continuously rather than solely at the end. Mid-project reviews or surveys can reveal emerging issues, allowing for timely course corrections. Additionally, creating a centralized repository—such as a cloud-based knowledge management system or project dashboard—ensures that insights are easily accessible and reusable for future initiatives.

Post-mortem or retrospective meetings involving all stakeholders are key to gathering comprehensive feedback, fostering open discussions, and promoting transparency. During these sessions, teams can evaluate project deliverables, assess vendor performance, and review deviations from scope, schedule, and budget. This collaborative reflection not only strengthens team cohesion but also provides actionable insights for future projects. To ensure that lessons learned translate into tangible improvements, they should be integrated into future project planning, risk management strategies, and decision-making processes. For instance, if a project faced frequent delays due to unclear role responsibilities, documenting this challenge allows future teams to implement clearer role definitions and improve accountability.

Moreover, assigning ownership for applying lessons learned helps prevent them from being archived and forgotten. Action plans or procedural updates based on these insights can promote long-term efficiency. Recognizing and rewarding teams that successfully implement lessons learned also fosters a culture of continuous improvement. Ultimately, embedding these practices into the organizational framework transforms lessons learned from static documentation into dynamic tools that enhance project quality, efficiency, and overall success.

An important chance to gather lessons learned that may be used to better future medical device projects is presented during the project ending phase. This phase is more than just the completion of duties. Recording what went well, what didn't, and why helps companies prevent reoccurring errors and progressively create more effective systems.

Constant improvement is one of the advantages. Teams can find the underlying causes by looking at problems including missed deadlines, verification difficulties, or regulatory delays and then apply these realizations to next projects and operations. Lessons acquired also add to institutional knowledge, which is important for starting related initiatives or onboarding new team members. A frequent obstacle is that teams are frequently impatient to advance and may disregard this activity. However, critical insights are forfeited when lessons are not recorded during the initial stages of the experience. Establishing a disciplined debrief with cross-functional participation guarantees a whole and honest evaluation of the project.

How best, in your opinion, to guarantee that knowledge gained will be really applied in next initiatives? Is casual team knowledge sharing sufficient or should companies set official archives and training courses?