Forget seagull management or the never-ending story – your project needs closure!
Organisations characterised by a lot of project activity often finish projects as quickly as possible, wash their hands of them and rush headlong into the next job at hand.
Some projects are just left to eventually fade out. Team members gradually disappear, move onto the next shiny, new project or just keep hanging around finishing stuff off.
In both cases it’s unlikely they adopt valuable, formal ‘close out’ processes.
A project has a start and an end by definition, these key milestones need to be properly planned and managed to achieve success. Many organisations don’t manage project closures well. It’s usually because they don’t include the process in the initial project plan.
There are a number of key elements to project closure. The level of detail and sophistication of each depend on the organisation’s size and the project’s complexity.
The key actions involved in project close-out are:
- Identify lessons learnt
- Review and document the project
- Archive project records
- Recognise outstanding achievement
- Disburse resources
These should all be documented.
