Project Closure – the final act!
An essential point needs to be made here. If the project, within any management stage, needs to be brought to a premature close and hence project closure, then the closing a project process (CP) is used.
Suppose a given project has three delivery stages after the initiation stage. In the final delivery stage, work packages containing information on the specialist products to be created will be issued and managed as described above.
However, once the final specialist product within the final work package has been approved, the project manager will trigger the closing of a project (CP) process to shut the project down in a controlled manner and perform project closure.
A final management stage is not used merely to use the Closing a Project process and project closure. In summary, the final management stage of a project will use Controlling a Stage, Managing Product Delivery, and Closing a Project processes.
The Prepare Planned Closure activity will be used assuming a natural project closure.
The project manager would use Project Support as they provide Configuration Management and request a product status account to ensure that all products within the project would have been approved and the project acceptance criteria have been met.
The Project Plan should be updated with the ‘actuals’ of this final stage before project closure.
The project’s products must now be handed over to the operational and maintenance environment, where they will be used to ultimately realize the benefits contained as stated within the Business Case.
The project manager would update relevant configuration item records to show that such products are ‘operational’. Any acceptance records should be created or obtained.
The Benefits Management Approach should be updated to reflect any products that have already realized benefits and include any post-project activities for such benefits that have not been realized at the project closure.
The Evaluate the project activity will create the end-of-project report to capture actual progress and aspects such as project performance metrics and will include the Lessons Report based upon the information contained within the Lessons Log as part of project closure.
Project closure for a premature close
In the case of premature close, the reasons for this should be entered and updated on the Issue Register. Any additional work may be needed to buy the complete unfinished products or make them safe.
Once the project manager has determined that the project should and can perform project closure, then a recommendation should be raised to the project board in the form of a closure recommendation.
The final activity in any project is the authorized project closure within the Directing a Project process.
The project board would need to review original and updated versions of the PID, review and approve the End Project Report, confirm any follow-on actions or loose ends, verify that the project’s products have been handed over appropriately, ensure that the Business Case remains viable, advise that project closure can now be implemented, and advise any supplier resources that these can now be withdrawn.
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