45 Closing the Project

Preparing for Closeout

As your project winds down, you may find team morale dropping, or anxiety increasing. Closure of a project can be difficult, particularly if the project has been long and/or difficult, or if team members will not be working together afterward.

To help team members get through this tough time, make sure they know what they will be working on after the project. Make sure they know who will be reviewing their performance. (If it is not you, let them know that you will pass on information about their performance to their regular supervisor. This expectation should have been set at the beginning of the project, too.) Encourage team members to come to you with questions.

Celebrating Successes

After the project, take time to celebrate the things that the project team did well. Try to recognize each person for their contributions and accomplishments.

Team celebrations, of course, are also an important part of project close-out. It is a great idea to have a team party. Another excellent idea is to have a close-out meeting with stakeholders, team members, and other interested parties. This provides an opportunity to review the project’s accomplishments and challenges – and it ties in with our next topic.

Learning from Project Challenges

No project will go perfectly. There will always be a risk you didn’t anticipate, tasks that run longer than they should have, project team members that didn’t perform as you expected… If it can happen, it probably will!

Meeting with team members and stakeholders to identify lessons learned throughout the project is a valuable exercise for several reasons.

• It ensures everyone is aware of the challenges encountered and what was done to resolve them.
• If something is learned from a mistake or failed endeavor, then the effort put into the task is not entirely wasted.
• Participants can apply these lessons to future projects and be more successful.
• Lessons learned should be documented and included with final project documentation.

Scope Verification

Another important part of project closeout is scope verification. This is where stakeholders and team members meet to determine whether or not the project did what it set out to do.

This checklist can be used as a guide for scope verification.

• Were all needs met? Were any wants met?
• Were all SMART objectives achieved?
• Were all deliverables met?
• Are the stakeholders happy with the results? Are team members happy?

If the project team realizes that an important deliverable has been missed, there are two options.

• Return to the planning phase and create a plan for completing the missed tasks.
• Choose to leave this item as unmet and create a separate project for it.

A Final To-Do List

In addition to scope verification and lessons learned, the following tasks should also be completed during closeout:

• Pass on appropriate project information (training documentation, blueprints, troubleshooting information, etc.) to the appropriate people.
• Ensure all payments have been made and paperwork submitted.
• Dispose of or return materials.

All project documents, both electronic and paper, should be completed and compiled. Make sure to include the original document, the final document, and any revised versions. Key documents include:

• Statement of work
• Project charter
• Project planning worksheet
• Project schedule and related documents
• Risk management plan
• Communication plan
• Change management requests
• Team member evaluations
• Lessons learned
• Meeting minutes
• Status reports