Closing

Closure

• Project management activities do not end immediately after the product is completed
• The main purpose of closure is to formally end a project

Types of closure

• Closure activities can be categorized to 2 main types as below
• Administrative closure
• Product is formally accepted by customer
• All stakeholders have no more issues pertaining to the project
• Contract closure
• Relates to ending the work with the vendor

Administrative closure

• Closure activities relating to customer and internal parties (sponsor/team member)
• Activities includes
• Meet with customers /sponsor to gain final approval of the deliverable
• Hand over to support team and begin support/maintenance
• Perform a project review and lesson learnt
• Compile a project report
• Return project resources
• Collect project files and store them for future access

Customer acceptance meeting

• Verify the acceptance criteria for the project have been met
• Obtain customer sign-off
• Dealing with a dissatisfied customer requires an agreement, in writing, on next steps such as:
• Project acceptance with deviations and omissions noted and explained
• Continuation of project until all acceptance/success criteria are achieved

Turning over to support team

• After customer sign-off, turn over the deliverable to the client, the project team will handover the project to support and maintenance team
• The support team will handle the day to day operations (long-term) and provide help to customer if there is any problem

Project review and lesson learnt

• During the process of implementing the project, there are bound to be mistakes made and new and better ways of doing things
• Conduct the review near the end of the project
• Include all team members

Suggested considerations

• 3 approaches to do review and lesson learnt:
• Which aspects were successful?
• What mistakes were made?
• What improvement to be done?
• Areas to consider
• Project definition, scope and team
• Planning
• Cost
• Resources
• Communications

Reflective questions

• What did you enjoy most and why?
• What did you find frustrating and why?
• What was successful?
• What didn’t work?
• What wasn’t achieved
• What would you have done differently?

Benefit of reviews and lessons learned

• So that the next project that is rolled out will not make the same mistake
• Effective methods can be re-used in the next project implemented

Releasing the project team

• Release team members at the end of the project
• Notify functional managers who are the bosses of the team members

Compile a project report

• A final report is:
• History of project
• Synopsis of what went right and wrong
• Account of the life and times of the project
• Account of who worked on the project and in what capacity
• Project report includes:
• A brief description of project
• A measure of success
• Lessons learned
• Explanations for any variances in time or budget
• Recommendations for future projects

Contract closure

• Contract closure is the second type of closure
• The last stage of procurement management which relates to activities involving vendors
• Deals with the vendor when the work is completed
• Project manager has to ensure the following:
• Contract conditions have been met
• Work specified has been completed
• Deliverables have been tested and accepted
• The vendor has been notified that the deliverables have been accepted

Source: PMP, Prince2