Chapter 4

Bringing Your Project to Closure

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Planning for a successful project completion

Bullet Addressing any remaining administrative issues

Bullet Helping your team transition to the end of your project

Bullet Evaluating successes and failures with the post-project evaluation

One characteristic that distinguishes a project from other work assignments is its distinct end — the point at which all work is complete and the results are achieved. However, with intense demands pulling you to your next assignment, you may be compelled to let your completed projects languish and eventually fade away instead of clearly ending them with an announcement, recognition of the results, and a thank-you to all the people who made those results possible.

Unfortunately, not bringing your projects to full closure hurts both the organization and the people who performed the work. When you don’t assess the extent to which your project achieved the desired outcomes, you can’t determine whether you conceived, planned, and performed the project well. Furthermore, team members don’t have the chance to experience closure, achievement, and a job well done.

This chapter shows you how to close your project successfully by finishing all substantive work, performing the final administrative tasks, and helping team members complete their association with your project and move on. In addition, this chapter helps you announce your project’s end and conduct a post-project evaluation.

Tip As Chapter 1 in Book 1 discusses, very large projects are often subdivided into phases, and each phase is treated as a separate mini-project. The discussions in this chapter apply to the closing-the-project stage of each mini-project as well as to the closing-the-project stage of the entire project.

Staying the Course to Completion

Following your project all the way through to completion helps ensure that everyone gets the maximum benefits from your project’s results. You also get the chance to compare your project’s benefits with the costs incurred, confirm the company’s return on investment, and validate its process for selecting projects.

Warning Bringing a project to an end typically entails wrapping up a multitude of small details and open issues. Dealing with these numerous assignments can be frustrating under the best of circumstances. However, the following situations can make the end of a project even more difficult:

  • You don’t have a detailed, written list of all the activities you must perform during closeout.
  • Some team members transferred to new assignments during your project’s course, forcing the remaining members to assume new responsibilities in addition to their original ones.
  • The project staff loses motivation as general interest in the project wanes and people look forward to new assignments.
  • The project staff wants the project to continue because they don’t want to end the personal and professional relationships they’ve developed or they’re not excited about their next assignments.
  • Your customers (internal and/or external) aren’t overly interested in completing the final details of the project.

Reduce the impact of difficult situations like these and increase the chances for your project’s success by planning for closure at the outset of your project, identifying and attending to all closure details and tasks, and refocusing your team. This section shows you how to do this (and more).

Planning ahead for your project’s closure

If you wait until the end of your project to start thinking in detail about its closure, it may be too late to gather all the necessary information and resources. Instead, start planning for your project’s completion at the same time that you prepare your initial project plan by doing the following (see Chapter 1 in Book 1 for details of what goes into the project plan):

  • Describe your project objectives completely and clearly, and identify all relevant objective measures and specifications. If one of the project objectives is to change an existing situation, describe that situation before you perform the project so you have a comparative basis for assessment at the end of your project.

  • Prepare a checklist of everything you must do before you can officially close your project. Here are some examples of closure items to include on your checklist:

    • Complete any unfinished project activities.
    • Complete all required deliverables.
    • Obtain all necessary acceptances and approvals of project results, including those of the client(s).
    • Assess the extent to which project results met expectations.
    • Perform all required administrative tasks.
    • Terminate all related contracts for goods and services.
    • Transition team members to their new assignments.
    • Ensure that all project documentation and deliverables are archived in the appropriate storage locations.

    Remember For each item on the project-closure checklist, specify who will perform it, when it will be done, and what resources will be required.

  • Include closure activities in your project plan. In your project’s work breakdown structure (WBS), specify all activities you’ll have to perform to close out your project and then plan for sufficient time and resources to perform them (see Chapter 3 in Book 1 for more on this tool).

Updating your initial closure plans when you’re ready to wind down the project

Encourage your team members to consider the closing-the-project stage of your project to be a separate assignment with its own objectives, tasks, and resource requirements (see Chapter 1 in Book 1 for more on the closing-the-project stage). As you complete the main project’s work, review and update the preliminary closure plans you developed in your initial project plan (see the preceding section for details on these preliminary plans).

Charging up your team for the sprint to the finish line

As team members work hard to fulfill project obligations, their focus often shifts from accomplishing the project’s overall objectives to completing their individual assignments. In addition, other audiences who were initially very interested in the project’s results may become involved with other priorities and activities as the project continues (which means they likely lose interest and enthusiasm for your project). However, successful project completion requires a coordinated effort by all key participants.

Remember To reinforce your team’s focus and interest, do the following:

  • Remind people of the value and importance of the project’s final results. Frequently discuss the benefits the organization will realize from your project’s final results as well as the individual benefits your team members will gain. People are more likely to work hard to successfully complete a project when they realize the benefits they’ll achieve by doing so.
  • Call your team together and reaffirm your mutual commitment to bring the project to successful completion. Discuss why you feel the project is important and describe your personal commitment to completing it successfully. Encourage other people to make similar commitments. People overcome obstacles and perform difficult assignments more effectively when they’re committed to succeed.
  • Monitor final activities closely and give each team member frequent feedback on performance. Set up frequent milestones and progress-reporting times with team members. Staying in close touch with team members provides you and them up-to-date info on how close you are to final closure. This close contact also provides the opportunity to identify and deal with any issues and problems that may arise throughout the course of your project.
  • Be accessible to all team members. Make yourself available when team members want to confer with you. Consider having lunch periodically with them and letting them see you around their office area. Being accessible affirms your interest in and the importance of their work.

Handling Administrative Issues

Just as you must have authorization for people to legally spend time, effort, and resources to perform work on your project, you must rescind this authorization when you close the project to ensure that people won’t continue to spend time, effort, or resources on it in the future. You can officially terminate this authorization by doing the following:

  • Obtain all required approvals. Obtain written approval that your project has passed all performance tests and adhered to applicable standards and certifications. In addition, be sure you’ve obtained customer or client acceptances. This step confirms that no additional work is necessary on the project.
  • Reconcile any outstanding transactions. If you’ve made project purchases from outside sources, resolve any disputes with vendors and suppliers, pay all outstanding bills, and make sure the contracts are officially closed. Make sure you adjust any project work effort or expenditures that were posted to incorrect accounts.
  • Close out all charge categories. Get official confirmation that no future labor or financial charges can be made to your project accounts.

Providing a Smooth Transition for Team Members

As part of successfully finishing your own project, you need to help your team members complete their project responsibilities and move on to their next assignments. Handling this transition in an orderly and agreed-upon fashion allows people to focus their energies on completing their tasks on your project instead of wondering where and when their next assignments will be. In particular, do the following:

  • Acknowledge and document team members’ contributions. Express your appreciation to people for their assistance on your project and share with them your assessment of their performance. Take a moment to thank their supervisors for making them available to your project and provide the supervisors with an assessment of their performance.

    Remember As a general rule, share positive feedback in public; share constructive criticisms and suggestions for improvement in private. In both cases, be sure to share your comments with team members personally and follow up your conversation in writing.

  • Help people plan for their transition to new assignments. If appropriate, help people find their next project assignments. Help them develop a schedule for winding down their involvement with your project while making sure they fulfill all their remaining obligations. Consider holding a final project meeting or lunch to provide your team members closure on their work and project relationships.
  • Announce to the organization that your project is complete. You can make this announcement in an email, in an announcement on the company intranet, in a meeting, or through an organization-wide publication, such as a newsletter. You need to make this announcement for the following three reasons:
    • To alert people in your organization that the planned outcomes of your project are now available
    • To confirm to people who supported your project that their efforts led to a successful result
    • To let people know they can no longer charge time or resources to your project
  • Take a moment to let team members and others who supported your project know the true results of the time and work they invested. Nothing can give your team members stronger motivation to jump into the next assignment and provide continued high-quality support than telling them about the positive results of their previous hard work.

Surveying the Results: The Post-Project Evaluation

Lay the groundwork for repeating on future projects what worked on past ones (and avoiding what didn’t) by conducting a post-project evaluation. A post-project evaluation (also called a post-project review or lessons learned) is an assessment of project results, activities, and processes that allows you to

  • Recognize project achievements and acknowledge people’s work.
  • Identify techniques and approaches that worked and devise steps to ensure you and others use them again in the future.
  • Identify techniques and approaches that didn’t work and devise steps to ensure you and others don’t use them again in the future.

This section helps you plan for, conduct, and follow up on a post-project, or lessons learned, evaluation.

Preparing for the evaluation throughout the project

Take steps in each stage of your project’s evolution (starting the project, organizing and preparing, carrying out the work, and closing the project) to lay the groundwork for your post-project evaluation (see Chapter 1 in Book 1 for more on the four stages of a project):

  • Starting the project:
    • Determine the benefits your project’s drivers wanted to realize when they authorized your project. (See Chapter 2 in Book 1 for a discussion of drivers and the other types of project stakeholders.)
    • If your project is designed to change an existing situation, take before measures to describe the existing situation so you have something to compare to the after measures you take when the project is completed.
  • Organizing and preparing:
    • Identify additional project drivers you may have overlooked in the first stage of your project. Your project drivers’ expectations serve as the criteria for defining your project’s success, so you want to know who they are before you begin your project’s work.
    • Develop clear and detailed descriptions of all project objectives.
    • Include the activity “Conduct a post-project evaluation” in your work breakdown structure (WBS) and allow time and resources to perform it. (See Chapter 3 in Book 1 for a discussion of the WBS.)
  • Carrying out the work:
    • Tell team members that the project will have a post-project evaluation.
    • Encourage team members to record issues, problems, and successes throughout their project involvement in a handwritten or computerized project log. Review the log when proposing topics for discussion at the post-project evaluation meeting.
    • Maintain files of cost, labor-hour charges, and schedule performance reports throughout the project. (See Chapter 3 in Book 2 for details on how to track and report this information.)
  • Closing the project:
    • If changing an existing situation was a project objective, take after measures of that situation’s key characteristics to see whether you successfully met that objective.
    • Obtain final cost, labor-hour, and schedule performance reports for the project.
    • Survey key stakeholders to determine how well they feel the project addressed their needs and their assessments of project team and project manager performance.

Setting the stage for the evaluation meeting

A post-project evaluation lessons learned is only as good as the results, expenditures, and performance information it’s based on. The information must be complete, detailed, and accurate. Prepare for your post-project evaluation meeting by collecting information about the following:

  • Project results
  • Schedule performance
  • Resource expenditures
  • Problems that arose during the project
  • Changes during the project in objectives, schedules, and budgets
  • Unanticipated occurrences or changes in the environment during the project
  • Customers’ satisfaction with the project results
  • Management’s satisfaction with the project results
  • Effectiveness of the project-management processes
  • Lessons learned

You can collect this information from the following sources:

  • Progress reports
  • Project logs
  • Cost reports
  • Schedule reports
  • Project memos, correspondence, and meeting minutes
  • Interviews and surveys of customers, managers, and team members

Remember Prepare a detailed agenda for the post-project evaluation meeting that specifies the times when topic discussions will start and end. Consider including the following topics on your agenda:

  • Statement of the meeting’s purpose
  • Specific meeting outcomes to be accomplished
  • Highlights of project performance, including the following:
    • The project’s original /current SOW/ scope statement
    • Results, schedules, and resources
    • Approaches to project planning
    • Project tracking systems and procedures
    • Project communications
    • Project team practices and effectiveness
  • Recognition and discussion of special achievements
  • Review of customer and management reactions to the project
  • Discussion of problems and issues
  • Discussion of how to reflect experiences from this project in future efforts

Tip Circulate a draft agenda, related background materials, and a list of attendees to all expected attendees at least one week before the meeting. This advance notice gives people time to suggest additions, deletions, and other changes to the agenda. Revise the agenda to address these suggestions, and distribute the final agenda to all meeting participants at least one day before the meeting.

Conducting the evaluation meeting

A successful post-project evaluation meeting (which you can hold in person, via videoconference, or through most other meeting methods) requires that you address the right topics and that people share their project thoughts and experiences openly and honestly.

At the post-project (a.k.a. lesson learned) evaluation meeting, explore the following issues:

  • Did you accomplish all the project objectives?
  • Did you meet the project schedule?
  • Did you complete the project within budget?
  • With regard to problems during the project,
    • Could you have anticipated and planned for them in advance? If so, how?
    • Did you handle them effectively and efficiently when they arose?
  • Did you use the organization’s project-management systems and procedures effectively?

Remember To ensure you get the most accurate information and the best recommendations for future actions, do the following before and during your post-project evaluation meeting:

  • Invite the right people. Invite all the people who participated in your project at all points throughout its life. If the list of potential invitees is too long, consider meeting separately with select subgroups and then holding a general session at which everyone reviews the results of the smaller meetings and you solicit final comments and suggestions.

  • Declare at the beginning of the meeting that it’s supposed to be a learning experience rather than a finger-pointing session. As the project manager, you run the post-project evaluation meeting. At its outset, you need to declare that the session is a time for self-examination and suggestions for ensuring the success of future projects. If people start to attack or criticize other participants, you can immediately bring the discussion back on track by asking the participants the following questions:

    • What can you do in the future to deal more effectively with such situations?
    • What can you do in the future to head off such situations?

    If people resist your attempts to redirect their conversations, you can mention actions that you, as project manager, can take in the future to head off or deal with similar situations more effectively and then ask people to share additional ideas.

  • Encourage people to
    • Identify what other people did well.
    • Examine their own performance and see how they could’ve handled situations differently.
  • Consider holding the session away from your office. People often feel more comfortable critiquing existing practices and discussing new approaches when they’re away from their normal work environments.

Tip Be sure to assign a person to take notes during the post-project evaluation meeting. In addition to a list of attendees and highlights of information, the notes should list all the agreed-on activities to implement the lessons learned from the meeting and the people responsible for those activities.

Following up on the evaluation

Often your busy schedule pulls you to new projects before you’ve had a chance to analyze and benefit from previous ones. However, even when people do take a few moments to review previous project experiences, they seldom incorporate the lessons learned in their future operating practices.

Remember As soon as possible after your post-project evaluation meeting, you, as project manager, need to prepare and distribute a wrap-up report that’s based on the meeting minutes and that addresses the following topics:

  • Practices to incorporate in future projects
  • Steps to take to encourage these practices
  • Practices to avoid in future projects
  • Steps to take to discourage these practices

Consider this wrap-up report as you plan future projects to make sure you apply the lessons you learned.