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Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Communications Management   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   PMO   Risk Management   Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)  

You knew that when gantthead decided to have a monthly theme based around project phases, there would inevitably be at least one article on closing a project. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone, so here it is! However, I promise not to focus on how important post-mortems are, or the need to celebrate success. Instead, I am going to use this article to try and shine the spotlight on all the other rather important tasks that are associated with ending a project.

The importance of the End Project phase
Before we get too far down the path of what needs to be done, let’s spend a few minutes considering what the purpose of this phase is. End project is about delivering formal closure to all of the project elements in such a way that there is no confusion, gaps or misinterpretation. Additionally, we want to ensure that the project adds to the overall organizational knowledge. That means that it needs to include:

• Hand-off of any and all project deliverables to the new owners
• Acceptance by all stakeholders that the project deliverables have been met or that the project is being terminated with agreed-upopn incomplete deliverables
• Formal closeout of all contracts and release of all resources
• Complete documentation of all project artifacts and filing of those documents in the organization’s project library

All of these elements …

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