Free Project Debrief Templates

A project debrief template provides a framework for the project team to evaluate a project after completion. Use the template to examine what went well and to identify the key challenges and areas for improvement. 

To successfully evaluate a project’s effectiveness, you need a method to capture post-project assessment details, ensure that all tasks are complete, and apply the project’s successes to future projects. While a debrief is a series of questions about a completed project, a project debrief template helps you assess your project with a pre-built form. A template prompts you to  reflect on your project processes as a whole so that you can improve upon them. 

Once you complete all project activities, project managers or Scrum masters conduct the debriefing process. Survey team members on the team’s ability to meet project goals, the project highlights, future project considerations, post-project tasks, and lessons learned. Whether you’re conducting a post-project survey or evaluating the project yourself, a project debrief template will help you and your team increase your project productivity and improve your project success rate. 

Though project debrief templates can vary, most of them include the following components:

• Execution: List any lessons learned from the execution phase. 
• Future Considerations: List any continuing development and maintenance objectives related to this project, and how they can be improved for future projects. 
• Human Factors: Enter any lessons learned pertaining to team member collaboration.
• Moderator: List the project brief moderator (e.g., the project manager or another team member who will facilitate the discussion). 
• Planning Phase: List the lessons learned from the project planning phase. 
• Project Challenges: List the project challenges, including elements that could’ve gone better, processes needing improvement (and how they can be improved), and the key project problem areas. 
• Project Close Acceptance: Have the project manager and project sponsor sign and date the form to officially close out the project. 
• Project Highlights: Enter the project’s successes, including accomplishments, successful methods, and anything the team found useful in accomplishing the project. 
• Project Overview: List project overview details, including the project’s original goals, criteria for success, and whether the project was completed according to original expectations. 
• Project Title: Enter the project name. 
• Post-Project Tasks: List any project action items that still need to be completed, and assign team members to each. 

Additionally, some project debrief templates often include the following post-project debrief components: 

• Action Items for Future Projects: List any action items that can be implemented now to benefit future projects.
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): List the KPIs you used to effectively measure your project’s success.
• Key Takeaways: Note the key conclusions of your project’s success, based on your team’s evaluation. 
• Meeting Date and Time: Set the date and time for the project meeting, or for the delivery of the project evaluation report. 
• Meeting Objectives: Enter the meeting’s objectives to ensure an efficient and productive meeting. 
• Task: List each project task that you want to address in the project debrief, as well as the task’s status, reference number (if applicable), and description. 
• Team Discussion: Provide time for your team to discuss the aspects of the project that went well, and areas for improvement.