Accountability

There are two primary decision areas that pertain to projects: Accountability and Action Plans.

Accountability

Accountability deals with looking at the project component results in hindsight, each project management:
  • Process Group: Project Initiation through Project Closure
  • Knowledge Area: Project Communications Management through Project Time Management
Accountability is a concept rooted in ethics and governance and conveys several meanings:
  • Responsibility: duty, task or assignment that is associated with person, process or system
  • Liability: obligated, indebted, owed to another, insurer, or bound by
  • Answerability: justification, substantiation, or rationality typically applies to persons, and when applied to processes is seen as a gap or system as an error
  • Creditability: praise, recognition, achievement or accomplishment
After the project team defines the lessons learned, only then should accountability be assessed. Here are some examples of lessons learned:
  • It was determined after the FDA investigation that the following procedures are responsible for a lack of product quality. We have now learned that new measures must be put in place to ensure compliance. The Quality Assurance department will put into place the following procedures to address these issues by year end, which will be continuously monitored through our commitment and investigation system.
  • As a result of the new auto brake system design that has experienced failures, we must convey to the auto owners through mass media our recall. We will use customer satisfaction surveys on the vehicle.
Note: some things that may appear to be lessons are not really lessons at all. For this reason, there must be a careful analysis of lessons classification

The misuse of the concept of accountability in the context of lessons learned can occur in numerous ways:

  • Ballooning: the inappropriate emphasis of a project component. For example, we would like to thank John Doe for his tremendous accomplishment on this project. As a result, our stakeholders can now feel confident in investing substantial sums in this project.
  • Non-lessons: incoherent experiences that have no practical learning relevance. For example, a sensitive issue occurred and it is now used to publicly embarrass or humiliate persons, processes or systems.
  • Non-facts: incorrect information, partial data or skewed results that are used to support other conclusions. For example, based upon the failure of this project, we can assume this project team is incapable of delivering any future initiatives.
  • Padding: inaccurate assessment of a project component. For example, based upon surveys of potential new markets, our revenue will be 800% higher than previously anticipated.
  • Witch hunt: invalid information that sets in motion an aggressive search to place blame on persons, processes or systems without evidence based on hearsay or misinterpretation. For example, an oil spill disaster is based solely on a vendor's product (i.e., seal) without mention of the other persons, processes or systems also responsible for the calamity. In this example, the focus of the investigation is placed on a sales person who sold the seals to the company.