Closing a Project

Previous pages presented the processes, tools, and techniques that guide execution and control of a project. This chapter reviews the needs of the client, stakeholders, and team members regarding project closure. It discusses the steps necessary for completing project closure and describes techniques to enact those steps. Project closure is an important step that is often overlooked or poorly executed.

Project Closure: The Final Process

During project closure, all the project’s activities are formally completed and the deliverables or results are turned over to the customer. Closure usually begins after the client has accepted the majority of the project deliverables. Sometimes a project will end prematurely or unsuccessfully. In either case, the project manager and team must obtain closure before moving on to their next assignment. Additionally, the team, client, and stakeholders will be concerned both about the disposition of this project and their immediate future. The following situations are common:

• Team members are concerned about their next assignment.

• The client or user organization is concerned about loss of technical competence and operational skill when you leave the project.

• Management wants you to start the next project immediately.

• Functional managers want to know how their people performed.

• Everyone wants to know what lessons can be learned from this experience.

There are many benefits associated with project closure. One key benefit is to ensure that you have met expectations and another is to gather and document lessons learned so you can incorporate successes and avoid problems in future work.

A formal acceptance by the client ensures that the project is truly finished and helps give finality to the project. This can minimize continuing calls from the client regarding product usage, bugs, or other questions, and it helps the team obtain closure and move on to other work with minimal disruption from the previous project.

Additional objectives of project closure include:

• Communicating staff performance

• Closing out all financial reports

• Improving estimates for future projects

• Improving project methodologies

• Smoothing the release of staff

• Ensuring client and stakeholder satisfaction

 Ensuring Project Requirements Are Met

Classically, project closure is defined as meeting (or exceeding) the defined project requirements. A project is deemed complete and successful, at least for the project manager, when all requirements have been completed. To adequately define project completion (and closure), it is important that the project requirements defined in the planning phase were defined carefully, and that they are measurable and verifiable. Increasingly, client organizations require the project team to prove each and every requirement before final payment is made.

Proof can be provided by testing, analysis, inspection, or interpolation. The precise measures and methods used will depend on the project’s context. Sometimes, proof of completion relies on physical or chemical testing. For other projects, we conduct accelerated life-cycle testing or simulate a system’s performance. Occasionally, government rules dictate what constitutes completion and success. The essential point is that early definition of critical success factors and critical success measures gives us the project’s exit criteria, helps to discipline the client’s expectations, and helps control changes to project objectives.

Sometimes, a project manager will be faced with ill-defined requirements or client apathy regarding requirements. A plant manager might say, “I don’t care how you do it, just reduce the failure rate of the widget line by 50 percent!” Here, the project manager still creates requirements, but closure cannot occur until the project objective has been met. This, of course, does not alleviate the project team from completing as-built documentation, training the line workers, and closing the project financials. Under these conditions, you must recognize that you are taking the role of the client and ensuring that the requirements will ultimately achieve the project objective.

How Projects Can End

All projects, by definition, must come to an end. How they get there will vary. In the book Project Management: A Managerial Approach, Jack R. Meredith and Samuel J. Mantel Jr. offer four useful categories to describe various project endings:

1. Termination by Integration. This is the most common and most complex type. All the assets and resources used in a project are redistributed among the existing elements of the organization. The output of the project becomes a standard part of operating systems and procedures. Transitional elements typically include the following business functions:

• Personnel and human resources

• Manufacturing, assembly, fabrication

• Engineering

• Accounting and finance

• Purchasing and procurement

• Legal, regulatory affairs, general counsel

• Information systems and technology

• Marketing and sales

• Distribution

• Customer service

2. Termination by Starvation. The project ends because the money runs out. In reality, this is not termination at all.

3. Termination by Addition. This is what happens when a project ends successfully and then migrates into the enterprise as a new business unit or product line. Project assets and resources migrate from the completed project to the new product business or division. In some companies, a deliberate career path is found as project managers successfully complete their work and become product managers.

4. Termination by Extinction. These are projects brought to an end (often before completion) because they are unsuccessful, fail to meet end-user objectives, are superseded by technical advances that make the project obsolete, or because cost escalations destroy economic viability of the project or product. In this case, technical work on the project may be suspended, but administrative work and organizational arrangements must be made to dispose of the project itself. Checklists must be completed, a final report drafted, lessons learned disseminated throughout the organization, and key staff must be assigned to new work efforts.

Not all projects end with successful objectives or requirements. Many end prematurely. In these scenarios, the project team no longer needs to deliver product or services to the client. However, this does not lessen the need for the project manager to conduct other project closure items as discussed throughout this chapter.

Administrative Closure

Administrative closure involves bring to completion all internal aspects of the project concerning team members, management, other stakeholders, financials, and equipment. The following processes ensure that no loose ends are left dangling:

• Deliverable Turnover—Verification and Acceptance. In this step, deliverables are reviewed and tested against previously determined requirements and are accepted by the customer with a formal sign-off.

• Post-completion Data. In this step, you determine any variances in the schedule, cost (personnel and expenses), and scope (deliverables and requirements).

• Follow-up Maintenance and Warranties. If applicable, hand off any hardware, software, or other equipment and review the coverage on warranties and the maintenance requirements.

• Team Member Performance Reporting. The project manager provides information to functional management on the performance of project team members during the life of the project.

• Financials. Ensure that all expenses are paid and project budgets are closed. Generate the necessary financial reports.

• Releasing Staff. Ensure a smooth transition for all staff to new assignments. Notify functional managers with sufficient lead time so that meaningful work assignments can be made.

• Formal Closing Report. Prepare a summary of the above information, including any open issues, and distribute it to appropriate stakeholders.

Contractual Closure

Contractual closure is similar to administrative closure except that it deals with project elements that were external to the organization. This is an element of procurement management. The following items would be outlined in the contractual closure procedure:

• Turnover of deliverables and all necessary supporting documentation.

• Verification of work and deliverables.

• Formal acceptance of deliverables per previously defined requirements.

• Audit to document performance.

• Final documentation that the contract is complete.

• Final payment.

Initiating Project Closure

Informal project closure usually begins just as the client accepts the major deliverables. In most projects, the presentation of additional deliverables follows this step. These include such items as training, hand-holding, completing the as-built documentation, and other deliverables.

One of the first steps in initiating project closure is to contact the team members’ resource managers to prepare them for the closure. This includes two important actions: (1) the managers need to determine the team members’ next assignments and (2) the project manager needs to communicate staff-member performance to the resource managers. It is important to begin this step early. First, it may take time for the resource managers to plan the team members’ actions and second, the staff may become concerned about their next assignments.

The project manager should meet with the team to review project closure issues such as the following:

• The team's new assignments

• Plans for lessons learned

• Assurance that all deliverables are presented and accepted

• Closure of administrative and financial information

Lessons Learned

We discussed earlier that one of the benefits of project closure is the provision of a methodology to prevent repeating mistakes. This includes identifying what went well and what went poorly during the project, documenting it, and communicating this information to everyone who may benefit from it.

The purpose of the lessons learned process is to capture best practices and improvement areas upon the completion of a project, major milestone, or substantial event, so that problems can be addressed and successes repeated in the future.

The following are sources for identifying lessons learned:

• Change Log and Change Management Forms. The change logs and associated change management forms are excellent tools for developing improvement plans. Each change is a result of an alteration to the plan. If there were no project changes, all projects would be on time, on budget, and all goals would be met. The change management system, therefore, provides a history of all areas where project teams, stakeholders, project managers, senior management, and clients can improve.

• Project Reviews During and at the Conclusion of the Project. This may include interviews, questionnaires, or other formal and informal reviews with the project team, client, and stakeholders, which can also yield excellent ideas.

• Written Notes Made During the Project. Frequently, during a project someone will recognize a way to improve the process. This occurs frequently during problem-solving meetings. Someone will say, for example, “If we had interviewed the procurement manager, this never would have happened!” Experienced project managers will write these comments down and place them in a special section of the project book.

Once these improvement opportunities are identified, it is imperative that they be communicated to everyone who may benefit from them. If the organization has a defined methodology, the project manager formulates a final report that includes both project successes and ideas for methodology adjustments. The methodology owners gather this information and make appropriate changes. For other organizations, the project manager may simply document these ideas and disseminate them through status meetings with colleagues or through e-mail.

Finance and Administration Records

After the major deliverables are completed, the project manager and team accumulate final sets of actual data for the project. These include costs, work, and final product documentation. Ensure that final, actual data on activities are recorded. This information should be kept for reference in estimating future projects. Capture the final project costs and other financial information. Complete the financial reports required by your organization and submit them for approval. Ensure this step is done early enough to allow time for the finance group to provide feedback and handle requests for changes. Finally, archive all information in your organization’s formal archive.

Performance Reporting

This action is needed for all staff members who have spent a large amount of time on the project and don’t report directly to you. When team members have worked on a project for an extended period, their direct managers may not have appropriate insight into their performance, making it difficult to establish appropriate raises, promotions, or demotions. To solve this issue, the project manager presents reports to these managers regarding performance. This also offers the project manager more authority. When team members know that you are going to report their performance to their manager, they will be motivated to perform better.

Staff Release

One of the final steps in closing a project is to release the remaining staff. This step should be planned early and communicated to the staff members to relieve their concerns for the future. One technique that may be employed for larger projects is to make the dismissal formal, either through a meeting where the project manager thanks the team or through a team celebration. This provides the team with final closure and allows them to proceed to their next assignments without lingering concerns.

At the outset, the project creates the team. At closure, the team created the project!

 

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To learn more about the concepts discussed on this page, see Improving Your Project Management Skills.

Recommended Books

Improving Your Project Management Skills.

American Management Association.

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