7.1 Understand the important steps in project closeout - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems

<v ->Well, hopefully by this point the project has proceeded</v> well. It's progressed, it's done what you'd hoped it to do. You've gotten to the point now where you're going back to our project life cycle. We're cycling down on the back end of the project's life. The project is completing, the final work is being done. We're ready to close it out. Remember, a unique feature of projects is that unlike repetitive organizational activities projects do have a defined start and finish. They're intended to be completed they're intended to be closed out. The other point to remember is that the termination process that we're gonna talk about in this lesson varies by company. It varies by the types of projects being done. And so there is literally a wide variety of different ways in which an organization can choose to terminate projects and engage in the final closeout activities. Some of those activities that they engage in are very useful, very helpful and actually aid in organizational learning so that next time we run similar projects we have a database, if you will of information that can allow us to do a better job. Sometimes the closeout is very informal and sometimes it's not very useful. We may engage in a closeout that is about as formal as everyone waving their hand and saying, have a good weekend and we're done. Or we may engage in some systematic final resolutions. And what I want to talk about in this lesson is to talk about some of these different issues related to the closeout process. What are some of the important steps in project closeout? What are the things we should be thinking about doing? What are some of the problems we have with closeouts? Why can termination decisions be difficult? Don't forget, project closeout may or may not be good information. In other words, all projects end, successful projects end, unsuccessful projects end. The difference is some projects end prematurely because we do decide to pull the plug on them. So we make a conscious decision to terminate a project prematurely because it's no longer viable. Other projects, we go through a much more formal closeout. Some projects are closed out on the basis of an internal project within our organization so the closeout itself may be very minimal and may not require a great deal of paperwork. Other projects are done for external customers. They, on the other hand, require paying close attention to contractual terms, making sure all settlements are closed, making sure everything is done according to the contracted requirements. So in external situations, the project termination may be a much more formal process that requires the sign off of contracts, closing of any accounts and making sure we've lived up to all the specifications required to make that happen. So what I want to talk about in this lesson are some of these elements in project closeout, first, let's look at some of the important steps that are necessary for closeout. And if we think about this arrow as sort of cycling from left to right, so the things that we have to do what are some of the things we have to do in parallel? What are some things we have to do sequentially? This is sort of another way to think about the final set of closeout activities that have to be done. Notice, of course, that we have to finish the work itself. What are the final activities in the project that lead up to its ultimate termination? So those activities, pay attention to them. Just because we're in the home stretch doesn't mean we're across the finish line. When you're the manager and you're trying to make sure that you're maintaining the status of the project We talked in the last lesson, for example about earned value assessments. Don't give up paying attention to earned value just because we're getting close to the finish line. Make sure that you finish the final activities with the same enthusiasm that you used early on. Handing over the product. Who's the customer? Have we made allowances for transitioning this project to its intended client? If it's an internal client, have we brought them on board? Have we made them aware of what's taking place? If it's an external customer, have they again been in the communication loop so they know where we are what the status of the project is and that we are getting close to the finish line? Then let's start talking about steps in terms of a formal handover that this may involve, gaining acceptance for the product. What this oftentimes means is managing this process of handover. There was an article written some years ago that talked about, it was titled something to the effect of Project Marketing The Project Manager's Hidden Responsibility and it raised a few eyebrows. Like, what? What was this person talking about with project marketing? The point that he was trying to make in this article was a project manager isn't just a face dealing with top management and dealing with the project team himself. Successful project managers are all about stakeholder management. They understand and are constantly interacting with the projects customers the people who are ultimately going to decide whether that project was a success or a failure. And as part of that process they serve in a liaison, almost a marketing role. They're the salesperson for this project with the expected customers. When I was up at the University of Maine I was one of my clients one time handed me a piece of paper and it was written by the State of Maine, and it was a a flyer that was put in mailboxes for people in a geographic region calling their attention to the fact that a bridge had been built over a local roadway and a big stream area. And this was just basically an announcement that your tax dollars at work, and we want you to know that we built this new bridge and it's, you know this thing of beauty. And there was a picture of it in there as well. And they did this for no other reason but to make sure that the customer base, the the local taxpayers understood the value of what had been created for them. Don't be afraid to blow your horn. Don't assume your work will speak for itself. No matter how groundbreaking that project is. Don't assume that you don't need to be out there making sure people understand and accept what it is that's being created for them. Harvesting the benefits. Well, what harvesting the benefits is referring to is us basically closing down the project and reaping the benefits of this process. Is there much that you can do here personally? Maybe not. Maybe the benefits are gonna happen much further downstream or maybe these are benefits that are going to accrue almost immediately, putting it all to bed closing out all of our final accounts. One of the things that a senior project manager told me one time, rather tongue in cheek but there was actually a great deal of wisdom behind it. He said, Pinto, don't forget to close out all your cost accounts for your project. And I asked him, well, why is that such a critical thing? Because the project is finishing. And he said, exactly, the project is finishing but your cost accounts are left open. And by this point in your project there's probably eight or nine people around this company who know your cost account data and they're gonna start charging their budget items against your project if you're not careful. It never even occurred to me. So at his beckoning, I went and closed out all my cost accounts right away. And it turns out that that was probably very good advice. Never thought of it, but just something to think about. Putting it all to bed what needs to be done to close everything out, to make sure that all the administrative details are taken care of? Disbanding the team. You notice how disbanding the team occupies kind of goes across the screen there because we may not disband the team all at once we may slowly start losing members along the way so that when we get in a termination phase, some people drop off because they've been reassigned to different projects. So their work is done, they wave goodbye and they leave. Some people get reassigned some people leave the company, some people, whatever. There's a whole phase that's going on here where people are starting to disband. So the team is slowly, or in some cases very abruptly disbanding, and we need to recognize that and I'll talk about that later in this lesson that we need to manage this disbanding process a little better than oftentimes we do. We usually just shrug and take it as a sign. Well, that's just the way it happens. I think we can do a better job with that. Finally, reviewing how it all went. We're gonna talk about this issue in just a minute but reviewing how it all went is one of those things that for many of us, if you're like my circumstances, I hated this because I felt like this was just an administrative detail that I had to dot my I's and cross my T's fill out all the final paperwork, file it in these three ring binders and shove them on a shelf someplace where they just collected dust and it just seemed like an unnecessary waste of a weekend while I was busily typing out final reports and things like that. The fact of the matter is it can be viewed that way if we're not careful, but there's actually some very good information that can be gathered from these reviews. But we have to understand how to set up the reviews. It's not just a matter of administrative details and paperwork. There's a lot more value that can come from this if we allow it.