Project Management Closure Phase

Closure is the final phase of the project. It requires the consolidation of work done, work required with all the stakeholders. Referred to as approval and sign-off process.

The Key Responsibilities to be a driven are: -

1.                   Is the objective Achieved?

2.                   How to you Measure it?

3.                   Feedback? and

4.                   Lessons learned?

The First key element for Project Wrap up is:

Ensures that the deliverable's are approved, accepted and handed over to the customer. A formal Checklists can be made and signed off from both team and stakeholders will help to avoid further confusions and will motivate the team in further activities. This checklist will be helpful for acceptance, finalizing and terminating resource or de-establishing the team and accounting the final project report.

The Second task is Elevating project success(Measuring): -Accessing, Verifying and Documenting project results.

Measuring: Information based on Objectives set, duration, resource, actual cost etc. to the end status. This will ensure you about project slippage in terms of duration and cost overruns.

The information collected will be compared against baseline project plan that we did in initial and planning phase. The difference between them will help to find out the correction action and put back the project in inline. This helps to identify whether the project scope is achieved or deviated due to some reasons?

Based on this draft we can decide whether the project will be handed over in stages or a single handover. The outstanding documents, rules, drawings, Manuals, unresolved issues should be documented and handed over as well. The unresolved issue should be communicated to the customer/end-user.

Feedback: - Relative it is set to quality and time and cost. This should not show the negative aspect of the project rather than improvising oneself for both team and stake holders as this is a critical step to manage. Acceptance may always have some concerns but make should your feedback lies within the scope and plan made earlier.

Examples :

-          Did the project stay in budget?

-          Did the objective achieved?

-          Stakeholders kept informed at progress of each stages?

-          Team work well together?

-          Agreed project life cycle fallowed?

-          Risk identified and managed effectively?

Constructive feedback's may help to achieve extra skill set and motive each one in the team including project manager and stakeholders.

And now we need to value the lessons learned and the feedback we have got. Most organization avoid this due to lack of time or fear of being blamed etc.

The value of lessons learned will be helpful in next outcomes and improve the performance overall. And also as a project closure part the project manager should have a celebration as well to reward the effort of stake holders.