Postmortem Audit Review of Projects

Postmortem Guidelines (“Major Ground Rules”)

Do not get back at people – make it clear, postmortem is not for getting back at people or finger pointing
Do not be oversensitive – check your ego at the door; be humble
Do not attack anyone – focus on the problem, not the people
Do not forget facts – what gets measured, gets improved
Do not write a postmortem book – people in future won’t read long reports
Discussion Topic:

General Construction Company has a contract to build three lower-income apartment buildings for the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico. During the construction of the first building, the Project Manager formed an auditing team to audit the construction process for each building. He asked the team to develop a list of minimum requirements for the projects and use this as a baseline in the audit.

While reviewing the contract documents, one of the audit team members found a discrepancy between the contract minimum requirements and the City’s minimum requirements. Based on his findings, he has told the project manager that he has decided to contact the City Administrator and discuss the problem.

Required:

Review the Postmortem Guidelines, a.k.a. “Major Ground Rules” outlined above, for preparing information inputs for a postmortem audit review of projects. As the Project Manager, discuss how you would handle the situation in the General Construction Company above.
In addition to your response above, respond to the discussions of at least two other students’ postings.
[Source: Samuel Mantel, Jack Meredith, Scott Shafer, and Margaret Sutton, Project Management in Practice, 4thEdition, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2011]