0230 Closing projects (OPEN Unit 12)

The closing phase of a project is often the most difficult.

Project team members are either concerned about whether they have a new project to work on or are being actively moved to other projects.

Also, when a project has been a long-term endeavour of, say, three to five years and the project environment has become “home” for the team members, people have been known to actually sabotage their work to drag it out and keep the project from ending.

All these distractions occur while the project manager is busily trying to complete the deliverables and take care of the requisite administrative and contractual requirements.

Furthermore, they are often they are left with inadequate resources to complete the tasks, due to either poor planning or cost and schedule overruns in the delivery stage.

The wise project manager starts planning for closeout at the beginning of a project so that there are no surprises or shortfalls when the customer accepts the project deliverables.

The experienced project manager then captures and transfers lessons that can be learned for the benefit of the entire performing organisation.