Network Upgrade Lessons Learned
This is a practical guide to building a lessons learned for a network upgrade project — what went well and badly, captured to improve future projects, adapted to the realities of upgrading network infrastructure and connectivity.
What a Lessons Learned is
A lessons learned is what went well and badly, captured to improve future projects. For the full concept and how it works in general, see Lessons Learned. On a network upgrade project it plays the same role, tuned to this kind of work.
Why it matters for a Network Upgrade project
Network Upgrade projects live or die on upgrading network infrastructure and connectivity. A well-built lessons learned gives the team a shared, explicit reference for exactly that — reducing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and making problems visible early enough to act. Skipping it, or doing it generically, is how network upgrade projects drift into avoidable delay and cost.
What to include
- What happened
- Impact
- Root cause
- Recommendation
Network Upgrade-specific considerations
Tailor the lessons learned to the risks that most often derail network upgrade projects:
- Downtime during cutover
- Hardware lead times
- Legacy compatibility
Example
On a real network upgrade project, the lessons learned would be shaped by upgrading network infrastructure and connectivity. In particular, it should explicitly account for the project’s biggest risks — downtime during cutover, hardware lead times, legacy compatibility — rather than treating them as afterthoughts.