Project

Closure

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Where are we now?

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Project Closure and Review Deliverables

FIGURE 14.1

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 Project Closure
• Types of Project Closure • Close-out Plan:
– Normal Questions to be Asked
– Premature – What tasks are required
– Perpetual to close the project?
– Failed Project – Who will be responsible
for these tasks?
– Changed Priority
– When will closure begin
and end?
– How will the project be
delivered?

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 Types of Project Closure
• Normal closure happens when a project is
normally completed-Objectives met
• Premature closure occurs when a project
completes early due to the elimination of some
parts of the project- e.g. bypass product testing
• Perpetual projects are projects that never
seems to end due to constant changes on the
scope or additional requirements. Yet, it must
reach final closure at some point due to other
scheduling necessities.

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 Types of Project Closure
• Failed projects are usually easy to identify and
easy for a review group to close down.Closure
of failed projects must include the technical (or
other) reasons for termination of the project.
• Changed Priority - Organizations’ priorities
often change and strategy shifts directions. For
example, during the 2008–10 financial crisis
organizations shifted their focus from money-
making projects to cost savings projects.

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 Wrap-Up Closure Activities
• The major wrap-up task is to ensure the project is approved and
accepted by the customer.
• Other wrap-up activities include:
• Closing accounts & paying bills
• Reassigning equipment and personnel
• Finding new opportunities for project staff
• Closing facilities
• Final report.
• Checklists are used extensively to ensure tasks are not overlooked.
• In many organizations, the closure tasks are largely done by the
project office in coordination with the project manager.
• The final report writing is usually assigned to one project office
staff member, who assembles input from all stakeholders. In smaller
organizations and projects, these closure activities are left to the
project manager and team.
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Wrap-up Closure Checklist (Partial)

TABLE 14.1

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 Implementing Project Closedown
1. Getting delivery acceptance from the customer occurs
when the client approve our Delivery Order. In the case
of assignment the Project Completion Form
2. Shutting down resources and releasing them to new
uses.
3. Evaluating the team, team members and the project
manager; and reassigning project team members.
4. Closing accounts and paying all bills.
5. Delivering the project to the customer.
6. Creating a final report.

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 Creating the Final Report

• Executive Summary • Recommendations

– Project goals met/unmet – Technical improvements
– Stakeholder satisfaction – Corrective actions
with project • Lessons Learned
– User reactions to quality – Reminders
of deliverables
– Retrospectives
• Review and Analysis
• Appendix
– Project mission and
– Backup data
objective
– Critical information
– Procedures and
systems used
– Organization resources
used

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 Creating the Final Report

• Executive Summary - highlights the key findings and

facts relating to the project implementation. It is a
summary/abtract
– Project goals/objectives met or unmet
– Stakeholder satisfaction with project
– User reactions to quality of deliverables
– Are the project deliverables being used as intended and
providing the expected benefits?
– Final time, cost, and scope performances are listed.
– Any major problems encountered and addressed are noted.
– Key lessons learned are identified.

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 Creating the Final Report

• Review and Analysis-Data are collected to record the

project history, management performance, and lessons
learned to improve future projects.
• Analysis examines in detail the underlying causes of
problems, issues, and successes.
• The analysis section includes concise & factual review
statements of the project
– Project mission and objective
– Procedures and systems used
– Organization resources used
– The project office also provides project schedules,
cost comparisons, scope data, and other needed
data to tell the story of performance.
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 Creating the Final Report

• The project office or closure facilitators often use

questionnaires and surveys to pick up on issues
and events that need to be examined further.
• For example, “Was the organizational culture
supportive and correct for this type of project?
Why? Why not?”
• “Did the team have adequate access to
organizational resources— people, budget,
support groups, equipment?”

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 Creating the Final Report

• Recommendations - represent major improvement

actions that should take place. They are often technical
in nature and focus on solutions to problems that
surfaced. For example, to address performance issue
of mobile app for enterprise solution, it is
recommended to develop native app rather than hybrid
app if the development schedule is negotiable.
• Focus :
– Technical improvements
– Corrective actions/Recommended action for future
development
– Recommendation of vendor/contractor

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 Creating the Final Report

• Lessons Learned-Stress the need to help others in

future projects.
• In practice, new project teams studying past project
reports similar to the project they are about to start
have found past review reports very useful.
• Example of lesson learned “mobile app development
require various testing on various size/platform of
mobile device. Crowd Testing is the cheaper and
faster way to do in in this context.”
– Reminders – to remind
– Retrospectives – to look back on past experience of why
when right/wrong.

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Example of Survey

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 Performance Evaluation

• Evaluation done for:

• Project Team – done by clients/vendor
• Project Manager – done by clients/vendor
• Individual – Done by Project Manager or Group
Lead/Supervisor

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 Project Performance Evaluations
• The purpose of project evaluation is to assess
how well the project team, team members, and
project manager performed against certain
criteria/
• Reasons for Poor-Quality Project Performance
Evaluations:
– Evaluations of individuals are left to supervisors of
the team member’s home department.
– Typically measure team performance only on time,
cost, and specifications.

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 Sample Team Evaluation and Feedback Survey

Table 14.2 presents an example of a partial survey that uses a

disagree-to-agree scale for its evaluation items. After the
results are tabulated, the team meets with the facilitator and/or
senior management, and the results are reviewed to assess
the development of the team, its strengths and weaknesses,
and the lessons that can be applied to future project work.
TABLE 14.2

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Project Performance Evaluation: Individual
• Performance Assessment Responsibilities:
– Functional organization or functional matrix: the
individual’s area manager.
• The area manager may solicit the project manager’s opinion
of the individual’s performance on a specific project.
– Balanced matrix: the project manager and the area
manager jointly evaluate an individual’s performance.
– Project matrix and project organizations: the project
manager is responsible for appraising individual
performance.

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Project Performance Evaluation

Your group assignment

formation type?

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 Conducting Performance Reviews
• Begin by asking the individual to evaluate his or her own
performance.
• Avoid drawing comparisons with other team members;
rather, assess the individual in terms of established
standards and expectations.
• Focus criticism on specific behaviors rather than on the
individual personally.
• Be consistent and fair in treatment of all team members.
• Treat the review as one point in an ongoing process.

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 Individual Performance Assessment
• Multiple rater appraisal (“360-degree
feedback)
– Involves soliciting feedback concerning team
members’ performance from all of the people
that their work affects.
• Project managers, area managers, peers,
subordinates, and customers.

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Project Audit

Break

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 Project Retrospectives
• Is a post-project reviews should be held with the team to
catch any missing issues or gaps.
• To improve performance on current and future projects
by looking on the lesson learned.
• Today, most retrospectives are the responsibility of an
independent facilitator.
• The facilitator also provides major input to the closure
report that will include lessons learned.
• By definition we can say retrospectives is a methodology
that analyzes a past project event to determine what
worked and what didn’t, develops lessons learned, and
creates an action plan that ensures lessons learned are
used to improve management of future projects.
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 The Retrospectives Process

Figure 14.2 shows a flow chart of the use of three interim retrospectives
within an organizational learning culture in gathering lessons learned during
a project’s life cycle and then storing them for reuse in changing unfinished
work. Probably design, development and testing FIGURE 14.2

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Agile Retrospective

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 Key Terms

Lessons learned
Performance review
Project closure
Project evaluation
Project facilitator
Retrospective
Team evaluation
360-degree review

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