What comes first? Close Procurement or Close Project?

Close Project comes first in the table on p. 61 of the PMBOK because it is part of the Project Integration Management knowledge area, which is the first knowledge area listed. Is the list sequential? Somewhat. But consider that Develop Project Charter is at the top of the Initiating process group and Identify Stakeholders is at the bottom. You don't have to identify ALL stakeholders before you can create the charter, but you might have a hard time finishing the charter if you don't know a few key stakeholders.

Another consideration is the timing of when you start something versus when you finish it. You might start closing your project before you start closing procurements, but you might close a procurement long before you even start closing a project. For all intents and purposes, I would not consider a project closed if a procurement were still open.

In short, the table on p. 61 is not strictly sequential, and many of the processes can be run multiple times throughout a project.

Does this make sense?

Aaron - this is an interesting debate and it's totally wrong to disagree... so... I must say I DO THINK THAT THE LIST IS SEQUENTIAL and I somewhat have some proof, but I'll let the discussion continue :)...

I'll post a separece discussion around what comes first the project charter or the identify stakeholder, and I'll comment my disagreement there...

Great input Aaron...

Anjum - this makes sense, yet why does close project process comes first in the PMBOK process order listed in page 61?

Just for the record, I do agree with your answer, but, I need a stronger response to convince others.... :)

Hi George,

Page 58 of PMBOK says that - at a project closure we have to close out all procurement activities. Thus the procurements are closed first and once it is completed then the project can be considered as completed (ofcourse with other closure activities too). The table on page 61 is only about the Process Group and Knowledge Area Mapping (Just Mapping, not necessarily the sequence).

Also, procurement can happen at any stage of project and a procurement closure always happens at the end of procurement. Thus a procurement can close at any stage of a project. Whereas a project closure happens only at the end of project.

Another aspect is that a project can have multiple procurements involved. Thus there will be multiple procurements that need to be closed. And in case of project closure - there will be only one project closure. Therefore there can be multiple procurement closures (and at different stages of a project) but a single project closure at the end of each project.

Therefore I would say project closure comes after procurement closure. And the page 61's table is just a mapping and not a sequential process list.
Hope this helps. Happy to discuss further!

Thanks & regards,
Vishakha Sharma

A project may have many Procurements.

You may buy products , services or outcomes from multiple vendors during the same project

For example, we have a project to to install a new Customer Relationship Management solution , used by 350 users throughout the Country . The country has about 6 different states and about 25 different cities where you have primary users.

There are Three suppliers on your project.
The Implementation Partner who configures the system
The Performance Testing Agency who will do the Load Testing
The infrastructure Agency that will build the servers.


Lets say the Infrastructure Agency builds your servers. The servers are built to vendor specification and the Solution Architect's design. You qualify the Infrastructure and you are done. You pay the vendor, you satisfy all claims and you close the procurement . You have not closed the project ...You have not closed the Project phase yet because ....Your Execution phase consists of

1) Build the infrastructure
2) Build the solution.
3) Test the Solution

You then engage with your CRM Solution Provider and they build the solution for you . Mind you , they could still leave the contract open because you still would like some post installation service from them. But , you would still close the procurement activity once they have installed the solution for you because you would pay them the milestone for the Installation activity . You may still have the "Defect Fixing" milestone or "Go Live" Milestone to pay , which you will be doing after the VALIDATE SCOPE and Customer acceptance is done.

Now once you build the CRM and you pay the vendor for solution configuration, you enter the testing phase and you start engaging the Performance Testing Agency . Once they have done the Load testing and qualify that the system performs as required , you close procurement for the Performance Testing Agency.


The Key Message here is :- You must not ask the question , what comes first - Close Project or Close Procurement.
What you need to know is , before you close the project , you need to close all the procurements in other words (finalise open claims, Pay the Vendor, Archive all the records from procurement, handover to operations, make sure that the ongoing maintenance and warranties are mentioned in the contract and will be executed from day one of Go Live).

Also , in my example above, you need to close procurements for the Infrastructure vendor and the Performance Testing Vendor , before you exit the EXECUTION PHASE ....because the work has already been done for the Phase.

NOTE :- Closing Process Group does not mean the same thing as ORDER of CLOSURE. It just means Project Managers must ensure everything has been closed off to justify the Move to the next phase or project