Across the Finish Line

“We are judged by what we finish, not what we start.” — Anonymous

When people think of project management, they often think of what gets done in early stages to execution of a project: creating a project plan, task assignment, status reporting, change management, for example. What often gets overlooked — even by project managers themselves — are the key elements of closing a project.

When the deliverables are successfully deployed, the stakeholders are generally satisfied and consider the project complete — but is it? On the other hand, projects that fail come to a screeching halt and the project becomes a sore spot that no one wants to hear about anymore. In either case, once the execution of a project comes to a close, people tend to move on. This is when you see the true calibur of a project manager — when the project is closed.

Less effective project managers will be on one of two extremes. Either they will

1. simply drop all ownership of the project and forget about it altogether, or
2. spend time and resources in excess of what is necessary to close the project.

In the first case, you are shooting yourself in the foot. In the second case, you’re beating a dead horse. When you don’t take the time to close a project properly, you’re likely to miss out on lessons learned, you may not have data easily accessible for audits, reports, or planning in the future, and (depending on the industry or nature of the project) you could even open yourself up to regulatory issues or even lawsuits. When you over-do the closure of a project, you incur unnecessary costs, annoy stakeholders, and may end up distracting yourself and others from organizational goals.

Here are some concepts that have worked for me:

1. Use good judgement. Take the time to plan how you’re going to close the project. Depending on the scope of the project, this may require anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 days – or more. Make sure that you cover the bases, but don’t overreach – stick to what is most important to the context (past project documentation and lessons learned can help out here). Be open and proactive in changing your plan as your project progresses.
2. Create a Closure Checklist. Once you’ve chosen your approach, make a simple list of things that need to be done. The checklist should be such that, when all items are checked off, the project can become history, and you can finally sleep at night.
3. Capture Lessons Learned. ALWAYS make a record of things that went well, things that didn’t go well, and plans for improvement. The project can’t be closed until the plans for improvement are either completed or added to a separate backlog of items that will be worked.
4. Leverage share-sites and project management software.  Too often project documentation is on someone’s desktop, inaccessible (and therefore useless/non-existent) to others. Having everything in a centralized and accessible data store makes your closure process and future planning so much more efficient.
5. Get Sign-Off. Give key stakeholders the opportunity to approve the closure of the project. This can be as simple as an email or as formal as a closure meeting. However it is done, it is important to confirm that their expectations were met. Having said that, make sure that your charter is the guide for the definition of done.
6. Communicate Closure. Make sure the stakeholders know that you have closed the project. This is a good time to showcase the success of the project, or (in the case of a failed project) some of the key lessons learned. Just as in the outset of the project when you communicate the launch, you are accountable to your stakeholders to report closure of the project.

When a project comes to the finish line, don’t forget to go the extra mile. Take the necessary time to tie off the loose ends and put things in order so that future projects can benefit. Don’t miss out on the most important part of the race – crossing the finish line.