Project 2

Module 6 Project Closure

Week 12

PROJ6003 – PROJECT EXECUTION AND CONTROL

Dr Ibrahim Abdallah [email protected]

Learning Facilitator

Master of Global Project Management

Today’s Schedule

Presentations for Assessment 3

Module 6 – What we’ll cover

Project Closing Process Group

Type of project closure

Administrative Closure

Learning for Future Closure

Celebrate success!

KALM retrospective on the subject

What we’ll cover in this Module

▪ Closure of a project or phase and closure of procurements.

▪ Balancing of stakeholders’ and organisational interests at project

closure.

▪ Characteristics of Closing and Project Endings.

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• The Closing Process Group consists of the

process(es) performed to formally complete or

close a project, phase, or contract.

• This Process Group verifies that the defined

processes are completed within all of the Process

Groups to close the project or phase, as

appropriate, and formally establishes that the

project or project phase is complete.

PMBOK’s Closing Process Group

The key benefit of this Process

Group is that phases, projects, and

contracts are closed out

appropriately.

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• In this process, the project or phase information are

archived, the planned work is completed, and

organisational team resources are released to pursue

new endeavours.

• This process is performed once or at predefined points

in the project.

• When closing the project, the project manager reviews

the project management plan to ensure that all project

work is completed and that the project has met its

objectives.

PMBOK’s Close Project or Phase

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Normal or Extinction

• The project has come to an end because it’s fulfilled its

goal successfully.

• Product, service or result was completed to the

satisfaction of the stakeholders and the client has

formally signed off an approval stating that the project

has been completed.

Addition

• When the project evolves into its own business unit.

• It grows until no longer fits to the criteria or description of

a project and can no longer be managed as a project.

Types of Project Closure

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Premature: Integration or Starvation

• Integration: Losing resources due to redistribution to other projects that have

been assigned a higher priority. Common in Functional organisations where

the primary duties of the resources call them away from the project.

• Starvation: Starting to lack resources that may force a project to close. As a

result of budget cuts or staffing issues, which may bring the project to a

collapse.

Failed Project

• The project has met its “exit criteria” established by the client/sponsor/initiator

Types of Project Closure Cont’d

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(Richardson, 2014, p. 486)

Project Closing Breakdown Structure

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K e y C

lo s in

g S

te p s

Administrative closure

To make sure that the project is closed

Ensure all activities planned were carried out according to plan

Project-centric

Check variances and propose adjustments for the remainder of project

Learning for future projects

Beyond the value of the project – Enterprise-Centric

Enable project teams to be more efficient in future

projects and generate more value for the organisation

Foster knowledge sharing

Lessons Learned, Best Practices, Issue resolution tactics

Lessons Learned give your organisation the opportunity to learn and grow with each

new project.

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•Satisfy completion or exit criteria for the phase or project such as:

▪ Ensure that all documents and deliverables are up-to-date and that all

issues are resolved;

▪ Confirming the delivery and formal acceptance of deliverables by the

customer to prove that the project is complete;

▪ Ensuring that all costs are charged to the project & project accounts are

closed;

▪ Reassigning personnel & Dealing with excess project material (reallocating

facilities, equipment, and other resources);

▪ Transferring the project’s products, services, or results to the next

phase or to production and/or operations;

▪ Elaborating the final project reports as required by organisational

policies.

Actions & Activities for Administrative Closure

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Project acceptance is the formal

activity undertaken between the

project team and the project

client/initiator/sponsor.

Common elements of

project acceptance are:

Project Acceptance

• Arrange the agenda of the project acceptance

meeting

• Distribute meeting materials

• Run the project acceptance meeting:

• Physical assessment results

• Functional assessment results

• Business assessment results

• Conditions of acceptance

• Rejects

• Record decisions

• Get Sign-off

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• Avoid last minute disputes

• Facilitate acceptance during closing

• Get agreement from client that project is complete and deliverables are

according to criteria

Why do I need Client Acceptance Procedures?

The criteria is defined in collaboration with the client.

▪Acceptance criteria must be clearly defined

▪Criteria are defined during project initiation and/or planning

The criteria is administered by the project team during final acceptance testing.

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• Client acceptance will be based upon the project requirements defined in the

contract and follow the formal acceptance procedure.

• But, it is also important take into consideration other steps during the handover:

▪ Develop handover plan & ensure customer acceptance

▪ Collect, index and file all procurement documentation (performance

baselines information, change documentation, payments records, and all

technical documents)

▪ Provide trainings to the client on the utilisation of project products

▪ Ensure the clarification of responsibilities during the handover

▪ Keep project design and development documentation

▪ Ensure the continuous service and maintenance of project products

▪ Finalise payments

Contractual Closure with Client

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Activities related to the completion of the contractual agreements applicable

to the project or project phase such as:

▪ Confirming the formal acceptance of the seller’s work,

▪ Finalising open claims,

▪ Updating records to reflect final results, and

▪ Archiving such information for future use.

Actions & Activities for Administrative Closure Cont’d

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• Financial closure refers to completing the project from the project finance and

budget perspective.

• Financial Closure is shutting down any expenditures officially. Meaning,

from this point on, no one should be charging anything to this project anymore.

▪ Project account closure

▪ Specified dates and a formal project account closure procedure:

• At this stage, we need to update any of the final project cost accounting, so we

have an exact list of all that was spent, all that came in, all that went out.

• Financial auditing should be undertaken to ensure all payables and

receivables comply with the laws and enterprise situations.

Financial Closure

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▪ Composition of a project financial

audit team

▪ Execution of project financial audit

▪ Current financial situations

▪ Financial variations

▪ Explanation and

recommendation

▪ Submit the project financial audit

report

▪ Key elements:

▪ Aim of project financial audit

▪ Information requirements of project

financial audit

▪ Project budget plan

▪ Job log

▪ Contracts signed with external

parties

▪ Procurement policy

▪ Procurement list

▪ Budget execution report

▪ Variation control results

Financial Closure: Financial Audit

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▪ Collect project or phase records,

▪ Audit project success or failure,

▪ Manage knowledge sharing and transfer,

▪ Identify lessons learned,

▪ Archive project information for future use by the organisation

▪ Measure stakeholder satisfaction,

▪ Collect any suggestions for improving or updating the

policies and procedures of the organisation, and sending them

to the appropriate organisational unit.

Actions & Activities for Learning for Future

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• It is a review to see how effective the project was managed

and whether the benefits to the organisation were achieved.

• Looks not just if the project delivered an outcome, but rather, if

the project addressed the specific business need intended to

meet.

• Post-implementation review usually involves an independent

party, which can act more objectively in making

determinations about how the project was run.

• It looks at the future of projects in the organisation:

• Helps to avoiding making the same mistakes and

learning how to do it better.

• Ideally, done as soon as the “fire stops burning”.

Post-Implementation or Post-Mortem Review

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• Conduct a survey or hold a meeting with the project management team to get

feedback on how the project went. These individual answers will help paint a

more comprehensive picture of the project’s performance:

• Ask for openness

• Be objective and focus on improvements

• Document practices and procedures that led to project successes, and make

recommendations for applying them to similar future projects

• Look with hindsight - Pay attention to the "unknowns" of the project that may

have increased risks. Develop a way of looking out for these in future projects

• Be future-focused – the purpose is to focus on the future, not to assign blame

for what happened in the past. This is not the time to focus on any one person

or team

• Identify both positives and negatives lessons.

Getting people involved in the PIR

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• Define the scope of the review beforehand - Clarify your objectives for the

review, and make your intentions clear (this will better ensure that people share

their experiences openly and honestly).

• Review key documents – This will help you assess the project planning

process, as well as the actual benefits achieved through the project.

• Where possible, use outside people in your review process to get an objective,

unclouded view of the project.

• Use appropriate data collection – by using interviews and surveys.

• Deliver appropriate reports of your findings, and publicise the results.

• Present recommendations to the organisation and the project leaders,

customers and other stakeholders in order to share and apply the best-practice

information in the future.

Key steps of the Post-mortem

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• Was the project goal achieved?

• Does it do what project team said it would?

• Does it do what the client wanted to do?

• Was the project work by the team done on time, within budget,

and according to specification?

• Was the client satisfied with the project results?

• Was the business value realised?

• Can we take things further, and deliver even bigger benefits?

• What lessons did we learn that we can apply to future projects?

• How well did the team follow the methodology?

• Are users adequately trained and supported?

Some PIR Questions

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▪ Managers don’t want to know

▪ Managers don’t want to pay the cost

▪ They don’t want to put resources back to what

has been completed

▪ It’s not a high priority / not interested

▪ There’s too much other scheduled work to do

(they have already moved on)

Reasons for not doing a Post-Implementation Audit

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• Reference for future changes in deliverables.

• Historical record for estimating duration and cost on future

projects, activities, and tasks.

• Training resource for new project managers.

• Input for further training and development of the project team.

• Input for performance evaluation by the functional managers

of the project team members.

Closing is also about Learning, so documenting the project is

very important!

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• Project Overview Statement

• RBS and all revisions

• Proposal and backup data

• Original and revised project schedules

• Minutes of all project team meetings

Examples of Project Documentation

• Copies of all status reports

• Design documents

• Copies of all change notices

• Copies of all written communications

• Outstanding issues reports

• Final report

• Sample deliverables (if appropriate)

• Client acceptance documents

• Post-implementation audit report

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• Executive Summary

• Overall success and performance of project

• Organisation and administration of project

• Techniques used to accomplish results

• Strengths and weaknesses of the approach

• Recommendations

• Appendices

• POS

• WBS

• Resource Schedule

• Change Requests

• Final Deliverables

• Other

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Final Project Report

MEETINGS

Are a key tool used throughout the Closing Process to:

Confirm that the deliverables have been accepted,

Validate that the exit criteria have

been met

Formalise the completion of the

contracts

Evaluate the satisfaction of the stakeholders

Gather lessons learned

Transfer knowledge and information from the project

AND….

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Celebrate Success!

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It is the responsibility of both line managers and the project

manager to deal with the emotional reaction of project team

members to maintain their productivity by considering:

▪ The project is only temporary, but the project team

members belong to the enterprise.

▪ It is imperative to keep project team members as part of

the enterprise development strategies and retain the

talents.

▪ Key factors when dismissing the project team:

▪ Develop the plan for project team dismiss

▪ Send project team members back to their functional

departments in a timely manner

Dismiss Project Team

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And… We are done!

PROJ6003 – PROJECT EXECUTION AND CONTROL

Thank you for your time, your contribution and,

most of all, thank you for letting me be part of your

journey!

If you wish to connect, I’m available at:

[email protected]