Project Closure
Purpose:
Understand why, when and how-to to formally close a project
Audience: Project managers, project sponsors, team members
and other key stakeholders
Learning Objectives:
• Describe business reasons supporting formal project closure
• Understand templates & tools available to support closing the project
• Understand how to gather data to create the PIR
Timeframe: 19 Minutes
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Course: Project Closure
Purpose: Understand why, when and how-to formally close a project
Audience: Project managers, project sponsors, team members and other key stakeholders
Learning Objectives:
•
•
•
Describe business reasons supporting formal project closure
Understand templates & tools available to support closing the project
Understand how to gather data to create and publish Post Implementation Reports
1
Why is Closure Important ?
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Why is Closure Important?
Projects, by definition, have a beginning and an end. Without a formal closure process, projects can
drag on as stakeholders strive to include ‘just a few more requirements’. These unbudgeted addons can create serious consequences like: significant impacts to schedules and budgets;
sponsor interest wanes and the team loses motivation and focus. Any significant changes at this
stage of a project should be treated as a second release and a new project. These changes have
to be tightly controlled by the project manager.
You finally finished a lengthy project and are ready to move on. Right? Well, not so fast! As the
project manager, you own responsibility to the sponsor, customer, and team to formally close out
the project. Being done with the project does not mean being done with the project management
process. Merely finishing a project does not ensure that the organization benefits from the
project's outcomes. The next steps in the process is to validate the outcomes and formally report
the findings.
For example, after completing multi-year project to implement a new Private Placement Workflow
system, you want to make sure that what you planned to do was actually achieved. Your
objective wasn't to simply deliver a system - but rather, to implement a process that: automates
the global deal workflow; reduces the time to complete each deal by 50%; provides real-time
7x24 secure access to internal staff and external brokers. The real measure of success is
achieving the specific business goal you intended to meet. This assessment occurs during the
Closure process.
2
Closure Objectives, Timelines & Boundaries
•
Objectives
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–
–
Transition Product/Service
Complete Administrate Close-out
Capture Performance Information
•
Timeframe
•
Grey boundaries between stages
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Closure Objectives, Timelines & Boundaries
Closure is the final stage in the project life cycle and is triggered when the sponsor formally accepts the
project. The objectives of this stage are to: transition the product, services and deliverables to operations
and support; logically complete administrative and logistical close-out activities including contracts; release
project resources and capture performance information that will help improve future projects.
Every project requires Closure. For large & complex projects it is recommended you either close out each major
phase (for example: design, coding, testing or training) or close out each major release. Remember it is
advisable that large projects be broken into manageable releases (for example – a formal release every 3-4
months) to ensure customers see incremental value over time. Projects allowed to go on for long periods
without incremental deliverables are destined to fail.
There will be a period of tuning before you can review the implementation as it is intended to function. You may
have to: overcome resistance to change; hold customer’s hands while they work with the new system; and
eliminate technical issues that surfaced after testing. Where possible, allow for at least one, full, successful
cycle of business before reviewing lessons learned. Since this may not always be possible (e.g. due
annual processing requirements that could be many months off), your agency may have procedures to
follow-up after closure is complete. There is a section in the PIR report called: ‘Future Plans Review’ to
capture information required to support this follow-up.
Due to the broad range of process activities, Closure occurs over a period of time. The project manager is
responsible for securing acceptances and closing out procurement immediately after the project is
delivered. Post implementation review workshop sessions, surveys and lessons learned sessions typically
occur approximately 2-8 weeks after the official implementation/transition of the project depending upon the
complexity of the project. The goal is to find a balance between allowing sufficient time to lapse so that the
full extent of benefits and short-comings can be identified while being cautious not to let too much time
lapse to ensure that the project is fresh on the team’s minds.
Remember the boundaries between the stages can be grey. For example, you may start some closure activities
while you are late in Execution and Control. Transition activities begin at the end of Execution and Control
but may finish up in Closure.
3
Transition Planning & Sponsor Approval
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Transition Planning & Sponsor Approval
It is the project manager’s responsibility to ensure that the sponsor formally accepts the project as planned. Since securing
this approval is not always easy, we are providing guidance on how to create measureable criteria that define
completion so that conflicts can be avoided and approval secured.
The ultimate measurement of success of the Execution and Control Stage is the project acceptance by the Sponsor. There
should be an agreement between the project manager and the sponsor on any unresolved activities and ownership of
the open/pending items. The Transition & Go Live checklist, project plan and project tracking log should provide
information required to identify what is pending and who owns these outstanding items. The specific criteria or checklist
items will vary by project. Here are some items to consider prior to the Closure stage:
1.
Has the product been implemented and is it producing the expected benefits?
2.
Have all deliverables been completed and implemented? If not, has accountability for outstanding items been
assigned?
3.
Have new workflows and procedures been documented, tested and implemented?
4.
Have all outstanding issues been resolved or assigned owners?
5.
Have hardware, software and other components been installed?
6.
Are system, functional, performance and user acceptance testing complete? Have serious bugs been fixed and a
process implemented to deal with smaller bugs and/or new bugs that might surface during regular operations?
7.
Is training of all staff (users, support, help desk) complete?
8.
Is all required system and user documentation complete and available?
9.
Has any old hardware, software, licenses been decommissioned?
10. Do you have the formal approval of the project from the Sponsor?
It is not unusual for a project to have outstanding items as the project nears its end. The key is that all major and minor
issues have an: action plan, owner and timetable that the customer believes is reasonable. Sometimes the sponsor will
conditionally accept the project based on formal plans to address outstanding items and issues.
4
Post Implementation Review Process
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Post Implementation Review Process
There are two types of project evaluation – active evaluation and post implementation review.
Active evaluation occurs throughout the life cycle of a project and is focused on continuous improvement. For active
evaluation to work, it must be encouraged by the project manager. Active evaluation is question-based. The team is
focused constantly on evaluating how they are: creating the work product and making adjustments to address problems,
issues, and risks as they occur. For specific events, team members should ask: Why did this happen? What were the
consequences? Could this have been anticipated, avoided, or mitigated? Who should have reacted and when? Was it
due to poor: communication, planning, estimating, risk, or issues management? Could policy or process changes
prevent a reoccurrence? The goal of this active evaluation is it to identify better ways of doing things throughout the
project, so the processes can be modified while there is still time to impact the project outcomes.
The second type of evaluation is post implementation review and is focused on providing data for future projects. We will
examine the goals of the Post Implementation Review (PIR) process and the CommonWay tools available to assist with
this evaluation. The goal of this evaluation is to capture valuable knowledge and experience gained during the project
so others can learn from the team. This evaluation is future-focused. You want to understand and document both what
went well and the areas needing improvement. It is easy to avoid events that went wrong out of concern of hurting
someone’s feelings or getting someone in trouble. Even riskier is the identification of problems that could be perceived
as criticism of senior management. For post implementation review to be effective, it is essential that these sessions be
viewed as informative rather than adversarial. Ask that the team be open, honest, and objective. This can best be
accomplished by staying focused on the facts and avoiding negative statements. For example, a statement about the
inadequate performance of a sponsor could easily become a career limiting move. Instead, focus on the facts and
lessons learned. For example: during the planning stage (week 4), a three week delay occurred while waiting for
approval of the scope statement and project plan (fact). This delay was due to a personal tragedy that took the sponsor
away from the office for 3 weeks (fact). This setback could have been mitigated if another executive were given
authority to make these decisions (lesson).
CommonWay provides three templates to capture performance information: Survey Tool (optional), Lessons Learned
(optional), and PIR Report (required). You can supplement and/or replace the optional templates with: personal
interviews, custom surveys, and lessons learned sessions to help evaluate the project. Performance information should
assess: whether the outcomes matched the project goals, objectives and critical success factors and if the customers
are happy with the work product. The results of the analysis are incorporated into the Post Implementation Report and
published. Some organizations may ask project managers to present their findings to a Governance Board and/or
Steering Committee.
The Closure process will help the team to feel a sense of accomplishment and completion and provide an opportunity to
celebrate.
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Post Implementation Review Analysis
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Post Implementation Review Analysis
The purpose of the business impact analysis is to determine whether the team was successful at delivering what they setout
to deliver. This information can be gathered through: surveys, one-on-one interviews, and lessons learned sessions. It is the
project managers responsibility to determine the most effective suite of tools for gathering the required information.
Project Benefits: Start this analysis by reviewing: the goals, objectives, benefits, critical success factors and/or acceptance
criteria from the Charter, Scope Statement, and System Development Life-cycle documents (SDLC). With the assistance of
key stakeholders, assess whether the product is functioning as expected including: stability, performance, and scalability.
Review the expected deliverables. Determine if the needs were initially identified correctly or if they changed due to
unforeseen events. Ensure that all deliverables have been delivered with an adequate level of quality or a reasonable
substitute has been provided. Identify any unexpected results.
Budget: Now review the project’s costs and benefits. Summarize final project costs. Highlight any cost overruns and reasons
for these overruns. Identify ongoing operation and support costs. Assess whether the benefits realized are worth the cost
of the project. If the project did not deliver a sufficient return, identify how this return can be improved.
Schedule: Consider the original schedule (start and end dates) vs. the actual schedule (start and end date). Analyze the
reasons for any deviations from the actual schedule.
Scope: Consider any changes made to scope during the life of the project.
Risks & Issues: Consider how Risks and Issues were managed, mitigated and resolved.
Team Work & Communications: Consider how the team worked together; how they dealt with conflicts and how they
communicated inside and outside of the project team.
Requirements, Architecture, Design, and Security: Consider the inputs provided by the business and technical stakeholders
and evaluate the quality of requirements, design, and security integration. Make a point to note the areas that required
improvements.
Governance Structure and Management Support: Assess how well the project structure supported the on-time/on-budget
delivery of the project. Determine whether you had consistent management support at all levels of the organization for
removing obstacles and keeping the project moving in the right direction. Sometimes there is initial support that wanes.
Lessons Learned: Assess what went well and what could have been improved. Identify the top 3-5 lessons that other
teams can benefit from.
All the above components (good and not-so-good) should be analyzed and reflected in the Post Implementation Review
Report.
Lessons Learned
• Purpose
• Forum
• Participants
• Questions
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Lessons Learned
Lessons Learned sessions are one more vehicle for capturing performance information. Typically, a Lessons Learned
Workshop is conducted with the entire team to review particular aspects of the project. Capturing lessons learned is the
process of gathering, documenting and analyzing feedback on events that happened during the project for the benefit of
future teams on similar projects. The Lessons Learned Sessions brings the project to closure by providing team
members with an opportunity to: discuss successes; identify areas that could have been handled better; and provide
recommendations to future teams on similar projects.
The session is typically a large meeting that includes:
•
Project Core Team Members
•
Sponsor
•
Extended Team Members
•
Executive management (Optional)
Some typical questions to answer in such a session include:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Did the delivered product meet the specified requirements and goal of the project?
Was the user/client satisfied with the end product?
Were cost budgets met?
Was the schedule met?
Were risks identified and mitigated?
Did the project management methodology work?
What could be done to improve the process?
Did you Archive information in the project repository?
The CommonWay Methodology provides an optional Lessons Learned template. The PM can elect to use a white-board or
flip-charts to capture the same information. This information is then analyzed and incorporated into the Post
Implementation Report (PIR). Remember, a lessons learned session is a valuable closure mechanism for team
members, regardless of the project's success.
Administrative Closure
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Administrative Closure
Administrative closure is an important part of the formal closure process and is focused on logistical items. Many of these
items happen early in the closure process.
Project Repository
Update the project repository with the latest version of all project documents. The Project Manager and team are responsible
for keeping the repository current throughout the life of the project. Given this, the work at this stage of the project
should be minimal. Some agencies may maintain a separate lessons learned database. If this is the case, follow any
agency specific closure procedures related to this activity.
Contracts & Financials
Complete all paperwork required for contracted services and approve appropriate final payments to contractors and vendors.
If there are issues or problems related to a contract, escalate and resolve them as quickly as possible. Close out project
accounts. Summarize required project financial information and ensure that any accounting is done accurately.
Resources
Notify team members and functional managers that the project is concluding on a specific date and resources can be
reassigned to new projects. Release space and equipment so resources can be reallocated.
IV&V other Audits
If your project operating model requires an Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) at the end of the project,
ensure that this is concluded by the independent vendor and that the report is published per the engagement rules.
Celebrate
Take time to recognize the accomplishments. If vendors or functional managers require evaluations, provide the required
input.
We have walked you through: how to secure sponsor approval via the transition process; why closure is important;
components of closure process and supporting templates. This concludes the Closure course.