PROJECT MANAGEMENT: A

JOURNEY TOWARDS
FINALISATION
BCE4813 PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Expected Outcomes:

Students should be able to:

 Plan for a successful project termination

 Taking care of the remaining administrative issues
 Helping your team transition to the end of your project
 Evaluate your project’s successes and failures with the post-
project evaluation
1. Staying the Course to Completion
1.1 Planning ahead for your project’s closure
Describe your project
objectives completely and
clearly, and identify all
relevant objective measures
and specifications.
Prepare a checklist of
everything you must do
before you can officially
close your project.
Include closure activities in
your project plan.
• If one of
the project objectives is to change an existing
situation, describe that situation before you begin your
project so you have a comparative basis for assessment at
the end of your project.
• Complete any unfinished activities.
• Complete all required deliverables.
• Obtain all necessary acceptances and approvals of project results.
• Assess the extent to which project results met expectations.
• Perform all required administrative tasks.
• Terminate all related contracts for goods and services.
• Transition team members to their new assignments.
• Ensure that all project documentation and deliverables are archived in the
appropriate storage locations.
• In your project’s Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), specify all
activities you’ll have to perform to close out your project,
and then plan for sufficient time and resources to perform
them.
1.2 Charging up your team for the sprint to the finish
line

To reinforce your team’s focus and interest, do the

following:

Remind people of the value and importance of the project’s

final results.

Call your team together, and reaffirm your mutual

commitment to bring the project to successful completion.

Monitor final activities closely, and give frequent feedback on

performance to each team member.

Be accessible to all team members.

2. Handling Administrative Issues
Reconcile any
Obtain all required Close out all charge
outstanding
approvals categories.
transactions
• Obtain written • If you’ve made • Get official
approval that your project purchases confirmation that no
project has passed all from outside sources, future labor or
performance tests resolve any disputes financial charges can
and adhered to with vendors and be made to your
applicable standards suppliers, pay all project accounts.
and certifications. outstanding bills, and
• be sure you’ve make sure the
obtained customer contracts are
or client officially closed.
acceptances. This • Make sure you adjust
step confirms that no any project work
additional work is effort or expenditures
necessary on the that were posted to
project. incorrect accounts.
3. Providing Good Transition for Team Members
Acknowledge and document team members’
contributions
• Express your appreciation to people for their assistance on your project, and share with them
your assessment of their performance. Take a moment to thank their supervisors for making
them available to your project, and provide the supervisors with an assessment of their
performance.
• As a general rule, share positive feedback in public; share constructive criticisms and
suggestions for improvement in private. In both cases, be sure to share your comments with
team members personally and follow up your conversation in writing

Help people plan for their transition to new

assignments

• If appropriate, help people find their next project assignments. Help them develop a schedule
for winding down their involvement with your project while making sure they fulfill all their
remaining obligations.
• Consider holding a final project meeting or lunch to provide your team members closure on
their work and project relationships.
Announce to the organization that your project is
complete
• You can make this announcement in an e-mail, company intranet, in a meeting, or through an
organization-wide publication, such as a newsletter.
• This announcement for the following three reasons:
• To alert people in your organization that the planned outcomes of your project are now
available
• To confirm to people who supported your project that their efforts led to a successful
result
• To let people know they can no longer charge time or resources to your project

Take a moment to let team members and others who

supported your project know the true results of the
time and work they invested.
• Nothing can give your team members stronger motivation to jump into the next assignment
and provide continued high-quality support than telling them about the positive results of
their previous work
4. Surveying the Results: The Post-Project
Evaluation

Identify techniques
Identify techniques
Recognize project and approaches that
and approaches that
achievements and didn’t work, and devise
worked, and devise
acknowledge people’s steps to ensure they
steps to ensure they’re
work. aren’t used again in
used in the future.
the future.
4.1 Preparing for the Evaluation Throughout the
Project

Starting the project

• Determine the benefits your project’s stakeholders wanted to realize when they
authorized your project.
• If your project is designed to change an existing situation, take before measures to
describe the existing situation so that you have something to compare to the after
measures.

Organizing and preparing

> Identify additional project drivers you may have overlooked in the first stage of your
project. Your project drivers’ expectations serve as the criteria for defining your
project’s success, so you want to know who they all are before you begin your project’s
work
> Develop clear and detailed descriptions of all project objectives
> Include the activity Conduct a post-project evaluation in your Work Breakdown
Structure (WBS), and allow time and resources to per- form it.
 Carrying out the work
• Tell team members that the project will have a post-project evaluation.
• Encourage team members to record issues, problems, and successes throughout their
project involvement in a handwritten or computerized project log. Review the log
when proposing topics for discussion at the post-project evaluation meeting.
• Maintain files of cost, labor-hour charges, and schedule performance reports
throughout the project.

Closing the project

> If changing an existing situation was a project objective, take after measures of
that situation’s key characteristics to see whether you successfully met that
objective.
> Obtain final cost, labor-hour, and schedule performance reports for the project.
> Survey key stakeholders to determine how well they feel the project addressed
their needs and their assessments of project team and project manager
performance.
4.2 Setting the Stage for the Evaluation Meeting
• Project results
Prepare for your • Schedule performance
post-project • Resource expenditures
evaluation • Problems that arose during the project
meeting by • Changes during the project in objectives, schedules, and budgets
• Unanticipated occurrences or changes in the environment during
collecting the project
information on • Customers’ satisfaction with the project results
the following: • Management’s satisfaction with the project results
• Effectiveness of the project-management processes
• Lessons learned

• Progress reports
• Project logs
You can collect this • Cost reports
information from • Schedule reports
the following • Project memos, correspondence, and meeting
minutes
sources: • Interviews and surveys of customers, managers, and
team members
 • Statement of the meeting’s purpose.
Prepare a • Specific meeting outcomes to be accomplished
• Highlights of project performance, including the
detailed following:
agenda for • Results, schedules, and resources
the post- • Approaches to project planning
project • Project-tracking systems and procedures
• Project communications
evaluation. • Project team practices and effectiveness
Consider • Recognition and discussion of special
including the achievements
following • Review of customer and management reactions
to the project
topics on your • Discussion of problems and issues
agenda: • Discussion of how to reflect experiences from this
project in future efforts
4.3 Conducting the Evaluation Meeting

• Invite all the people who participated in your project at all points
Invite the right throughout its life. If the list of potential invitees is too long, consider
people meeting separately with selected subgroups and then holding a general
session at which everyone reviews the results of the smaller meetings
and you solicit final comments and suggestions.

Declare at the > As a project manager, you run the post-project evaluation meeting.
beginning of the At its outset, you need to declare that the session is a time for self-
meeting that it’s examination and suggestions for ensuring the success of future projects. If
supposed to be people start to attack or criticize other participants, you can immediately
a learning bring the discussion back on track.
experience
rather than a > If people resist your attempts to redirect their conversations, you can
finger-pointing mention actions that you, as project manager, can take in the future to
session head off or deal with similar situations more effectively and then ask
people to share additional ideas.
 • Identify what other people did well.
Encourage
people to: • Examine their own performance and see how
they could’ve handled situations differently.

Consider • People often feel more comfortable critiquing

holding the existing practices and discussing new
session away approaches when they’re away from their
from your office normal work environments.
4.4 Following up on the Evaluation

Practices to
incorporate in
future projects

Steps to take Steps to take

to discourage to encourage
these these
practices practices

Practices to
avoid in future
projects
Thank you..