Lecture 11: Project Closure

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Learning Objectives
● Identify different types of project closure.
● Understand the challenges of closing out a project.
● Explain the importance of a project audit.
● Know how to use project retrospectives to obtain lessons learned.
● Assess level of project management maturity.
● Provide useful advice for conducting team performance reviews.
● Provide useful advice for conducting performance reviews of project
members.

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Closing

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Reporting Project Completion
● First of all, does everyone agree that is project has reached it “successful
completion”?
🡪 If yes, then the project has succeeded.
● PM is responsible for addressing the following items:
❖ Client/ sponsor/ stakeholder sign-offs
The
❖ Accounting close organization
❖ Contracts close will benefit
❖ Lesson learned document: from these
- Content lessons documents in
- Process improvement lessons future project
❖ Project documentation archival endeavors.
❖ Project performance appraisal
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Types of Project Closure
● Normal: Completed
● Premature: some parts of the project eliminated
● Perpetual Some projects never seem to end.
● Failed Project
● Changed Priority: Projects may be altered or cancelled

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Project Closure and Review Deliverables

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● Wrapping up the project. The major wrap-up task is to ensure the project is
approved and accepted by the customer.
● Project audit. Audits are post-project reviews of how successful the project
was. They include causal analysis and thorough retrospectives which identify
lessons learned.
● Evaluation of performance and management of the project. Evaluation
includes team, individual team members, and project manager performance.
Vendors and the customer may provide external input.

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I. Wrap-up Closure Activities
1. Getting delivery acceptance from the customer.
2. Shutting down resources and releasing to new uses.
3. Reassigning project team members.
4. Closing accounts and seeing all bills are paid.
5. Delivering the product to the customer.
6. Creating a final report.

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Wrap-up Closure Checklist

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II. Project Audits
● In-process project audits. Project audits early in projects allow for corrective
changes, if they are needed, on the audited project or others in progress. In-
process project audits concentrate on project progress and performance and
check if conditions have changed.
● Postproject audits. These audits tend to include more detail and depth than
inprocess project audits. Project audits of completed projects emphasize
improving the management of future projects. Postproject audits do check on
project performance, but the audit represents a broader view of the project’s
role in the organization; for example, were the strategic benefits claimed
actually delivered?

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Guidelines for Conducting a Project Audit

1. First and foremost, the philosophy must be that the project audit is not a witch hunt.
2. Comments about individuals or groups participating in the project should be minimized. Keep to
project issues, not what happened or by whom.
3. Audit activities should be intensely sensitive to human emotions and reactions. The inherent threat
to those being evaluated should be reduced as much as possible.
4. Accuracy of data should be verifiable or noted as subjective, judgmental, or hearsay.
5. Senior management should announce support for the project audit and see that the audit group has
access to all information, project participants, and (in most cases) project customers.
6. The attitude toward a project audit and its aftermath depends on the modus operandi of the audit
leadership and group. The objective is not to prosecute. The objective is to learn and conserve
valuable organization resources where mistakes have been made.
7. The audit should be completed as quickly as is reasonable.

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 Steps

● Step 1: Initiation and Staffing

● Step 2: Data Collection and Analysis
● Step 3: Reporting
1. Classification
2. Analysis
3. Recommendation
4. Lesson learned
5. Appendix

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Project Retrospectives
In retrospecitive methodology, the facilitator uses several questionnaires to
conduct post-project audits. These surveys focus not only on project operations,
but also on how the organization’s culture impacted project success and failures

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Project Process
Review
Questionaire

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III. Post-Implementation Evaluation
● Team Evaluation
● Individual, Team Member, and Project Manager Performance Reviews

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Team Evaluation
Evaluation of performance is essential to encourage changes in behavior and to
support individual career development and continuous improvement through
organizational learning.

Organizations should consider evaluating the team-building process, effectiveness

of group decision and problem-solving processes, group cohesion, trust among
team members, and quality of information exchanged.

Measurement of customer and user satisfaction with project deliverables (i.e., the
project results).

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Individual, Team Member & Project Manager Performance Reviews

Performance appraisals generally fulfill two important functions.

● Developmental in nature: the focus is on identifying individual strengths and

weaknesses and developing action plans for improving performance.
● Evaluative and involves assessing how well the person has performed in
order to determine salary or merit adjustments.

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The End
Homework: Interview Project Manager

1. About project closure process: How is it done?

2. Use Project Process Review Questionaire in order to identify lesson learned

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