Are You Ready to Close Your Project?

You have delivered every component of your project, and your project team has started to disperse. It’s time for project closure, right? Not so fast! Here are other critical steps to take before closing your project. 

• Confirm that business value is being generated. A project shouldn’t close until the business acknowledges value. However, some projects won’t generate business value for several months, for example, until new products sell. In other instances, cost savings trickle down over time.  keep a project open to track outcomes. This helps the project team understand if there are shortcomings in the project deliverables. Addressing those shortcomings educates team members so they can improve their skills for future projects.
• Verify allocated costs. Check to see whether costs are still showing up in your project accounts. If they are, further work might be required, such as confirming final contractor payments. It could also mean someone is incorrectly allocating costs to your project. Correct these errors before closure so your project costs aren’t inflated.
• Determine if your sponsor is still engaged. If your sponsor continues to call meetings and discuss the project, it’s too soon to close the project. Work with your sponsor and review any outcomes they believe are missing.  If the sponsor pushes for items beyond the scope of the project, seek to understand their point of view. Try to convince them to allow you to close the completed project and launch a new one. This new project would have its own business case to create the extra outcomes your sponsor desires.
• Confirm stakeholders are using project deliverables without help. Business value should be generated without assistance by the project team. Otherwise, the cost of helping stakeholders may negate the value achieved. Before closing a project, ensure your deliverables are being used as intended. All stakeholders should independently use your deliverables in a consistent manner. If not, revisit your training and make corrections.

If you perform other steps before closing a project, tell us about what you do in the comments section.

For more about closing a project, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

Coming up:

I have an Office Hours in the works for September with Doug Rose and Chris Croft, two of my (many) idols in the LinkedIn Learning instructor community. Look for more info soon!

I’m almost done updating Project Management Foundations. In a few months, you can look for the updated edition, which includes some info on PMBoK7 and other changes.