Closing a Project Successfully

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Lessons Learned  

Project work involves dealing with successes and failures, but sooner or later the project will come to an end. It might be the untimely end of a project with problems that forced it to stop prematurely. It might be the big party to celebrate a job well done. Either way, it is important to make sure that the project closes out correctly.

If a project has been successful throughout the execution but does not end correctly, it can leave a very bad impression on the client and affect future business. Just because everything has been done correctly throughout the rest of the project, the ending is still the most important part.

On the other hand, if a project was in trouble, closing it out correctly can help everyone who was on the project. The client can get a complete view of what happened so that they will not repeat the same issues. The project team will be able to evaluate and document the problems and hopefully learn some lessons from the failed project.

Stop Working
One of the first steps in closing out the project is to ensure that the project team does in fact stop working. Oftentimes as projects go on, more and more work is identified and issues are created; the work that goes into a project can turn into a never-ending stream of changes, clarifications and updates. But a project is in fact a temporary endeavor, and the project manager needs to work to ensure …

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