The importance of Planned Project Closure Activities

Project closure procedures in some way differ amongst governments, institutions, organizations, companies, and individuals. According to Robert K. Wysocki, projects should be closed by getting client acceptance of deliverables, ensuring that all deliverables are installed and that the documentation is in place, getting client sign-off on the final report, conducting the post implementation audit and celebrating the success (Wysocki: pp.284-285). Wysocki gives no hint of the importance of legal closure or contract documentation. On the other hand the PMBOK Guide demand contract documentation be a close project input (PMBOK Guide 3rd ed, pp.101), but yet gives no indication of the importance of celebrating success. Sid Kemp, PMP, in his book Project Management Demystified (McGraw-Hill, 2004) considers evaluation of project results and processes, preparing a lessons learned document and conducting financial and legal closure as the requirements for project closure. He does demand post implementation audit. And project management products company Method123 necessitate project closure activities confirm project closure, identify closure actions, complete closure actions, review project performance and conformance, and identify project achievements, failures and lessons learned (Method123.com). The one thing which is common amongst all the PM professionals suggestions (and of which I do fully agree and support), is the importance of establishing approved formal procedures and documentation of project closure activities before closure phase. Method123 demand detailed closure activities and tasks when planning of the project. PMBOK requires project management plans define how a project is closed. Sid Kemp, PMP also advised project closure activities is addressed in the project design stage; and Robert K. Wysocki warned not to negotiate project completion criteria during the closure stage. These are viable indicators to convince any company executive to never skip planning project closure activities prior to closure phase and the major impact threat highly likely to occur if such skip occurs.

Bibliography Robert K. Wysocki, Effective Project Management Traditional, Agile, Extreme, 5th ed, 2009 PMBOK Guide, 3rd ed, 2004 Project Management Demystified, Sid Kemp, 2004 Method123.com