Lessons Learned Template

What is a lessons learned template?

A lessons learned template is a structured document for recording the key insights from a project, initiative, or incident — including what went well, what went wrong, why it happened, and what the team recommends doing differently next time. It turns experience into organisational knowledge that future teams can access and apply.

Most organisations repeat the same mistakes because lessons are never captured — or captured but never found. Project teams move on to the next delivery, and the knowledge from what they just completed stays in their heads. A standardised template ensures that lessons are documented consistently, stored where others can find them, and structured in a way that makes them actionable rather than anecdotal.

Who should use this template?

This template is for teams responsible for continuous improvement:

• Project Managers — document project lessons at close-out so future projects benefit from the experience
• Operations Managers — capture process improvements after incidents or changes
• Team Leads — facilitate lessons learned sessions after sprints, milestones, or events
• Knowledge Managers — ensure lessons are stored in a searchable, centralised format that future teams can access

What’s included in this template?

The template has two parts: structured metadata fields and the lessons body.

Metadata fields classify each document:

• Project or initiative name
• Department or team
• Lessons author — the person who facilitated the session
• Date of the lessons learned session
• Project phase or milestone covered

Lessons body captures the full analysis:

• Context — brief description of the project, its objectives, and outcome
• What went well — successes worth repeating, with specific examples
• What went wrong — failures or challenges encountered, with root cause analysis
• Recommendations — actionable changes for future projects, with named owner and priority
• Key metrics — relevant data points (budget variance, schedule adherence, quality scores) that support the analysis
• Related documents — links to project plans, reports, or previous lessons for context

How to create and customise this template in Elium

1. Open the Template Builder — Go to your profile menu and select the Template Builder tab, or click “+ Create” and choose “Create a new template”.
2. Set the scope — Choose an icon, enable the template, and decide whether it applies platform-wide or to specific spaces (e.g. Project Management or Operations).
3. Add structured fields — Click “Field” to add metadata: text fields for project name and department, a user field for lessons author, a date field for session date, and a tag field for project phase (pre-populate with “Planning”, “Execution”, “Close-out”, “Post-incident”). Mark project name and session date as mandatory.
4. Build the lessons structure — Use the “+” button to add content blocks: a text block for context, text blocks for what went well and what went wrong, a table block for recommendations (columns: recommendation, priority, owner, deadline), a text block for key metrics, and a links block for related documents.
5. Preview and save — Review the template layout, then save. Project managers can now select it when running close-out sessions, and you can apply it to existing content in bulk.

How AI helps you create and use this template

Capture faster. Paste your meeting notes, retrospective boards, or email discussions into Elium’s AI. It categorises feedback into successes, failures, and recommendations — so the facilitator organises rather than transcribes.

Retrieve smarter. A project manager starting a new construction project asks Elium’s AI: “What lessons did we learn from the Lyon metro tunnelling phase?” The AI returns the specific successes, failures, and recommendations from that project — so proven improvements are applied from day one.

Why teams use Elium for lessons learned

Lessons learned sessions happen — but the documents they produce often disappear. They are filed in a project folder, never tagged, and never found by the next team facing the same challenge. Elium solves this by making lessons searchable and contextual: structured templates ensure consistency, tags and metadata make lessons discoverable, and AI-powered search lets anyone find relevant experience from a plain question.

Bouygues Construction — 53,500 employees across 80 countries — uses Elium to centralise project knowledge including lessons learned, procedures, and best practices. When a team in one country encounters a challenge, the solution from a previous project in another country is one search away.