4.5 Closing a Project

We’re going to talk about closing the project. Closing is the last of our five process groups. We identified all the necessary deliverables for the project. Whether they’re are charter, our scope, we planned how we where going to get those things done that we agreed upon in the initiating phase. We actually went out and did that. Now in controlling, we monitored and controlled this thing all the way through. And now it’s time to stop the project. Things have been successful. It’s all done, it’s over, it’s finished. We have to wrap up a few last little details and stop this thing. We did a lot of work to start it, now we have to stop it. Here’s a little checklist of some things you can do. We have to do things internally, and some things externally. First of all, just complete the project. We started off with then looks like this. Now we’re moving along and we get to this thing and that says, hm, it looks like done, I think we’re done. So, yep, it’s done, project is finished. We’ll just dust that off a little bit, polish it up and say, okay, finished. Go show it to our customers, our key stakeholders and say project looks like it’s done, everybody agrees projects done, finished the project. Then, close out all the details. There’s a number of things. Some of the things that we have to close out will be internal things, some will be external things. We have to pay some people, we have to get paid by pis, some people. We have to stop some things that are happening inside the organization. Like we’re getting some support, some administrative support from somebody. We don’t need that anymore. We have a room that we’ve been using for the last year and a half. Every Tuesday morning at 9:30 in the morning til 11, we don’t need that anymore. We just let people know that we’re done with those things. We started some electronic number in the system in the organization so that we could charge our time against this project. And now, we don’t need to do that anymore so we need to turn those numbers off. There are a number of things internally and externally we need to close out. We also need to just stop the project team. People are done with the project. Project is over, finished, done. Let people know that. Say thank you to people along the way and let them know that, that this thing is finished. Review the project success. Every project, no matter how good it was, could have gone better in some areas and went really well in some areas. No matter how bad the project is, could’ve gone better in some areas, went really well in some areas. Capture those things, so that we can be better at the next project that we do. If we can share that with the whole organization somehow, the whole organization gets better at project management. But at least we, as project managers, need to look at our projects and make ourselves better next time. And we also need to reward, everybody recognizes them for what they did. Celebrate a little bit. All you need to do is say thank you to people. Should have been doing that all along the way. But at the end of the project, just take one more chance to say thank you to people. And it’s amazing how powerful and simple little thing can be like getting everybody together just for some sort of a little pizza party at lunchtime. This, it doesn’t cost you very much to order in a couple of pizzas and bring in something to drink. Probably, non-alcoholic something. You can get some great little carbonated juices at Trader Joe’s. It just never ceases to amaze me. At the end of a project, if you just pull a little thing together like that, and set everybody down, and say hey, we’re done with that project. It was a job well done. And start to talk about some things about, what kind of fun you had along the way? What the biggest troubles were along the way? Everybody just kinda go through that. It helps everybody disconnect from the project. And also, it’s just a great way to say thank you. It never ceases to amaze me how something that simple is so powerful for your project team. Remember all you have to do, all you have, to get the right person in the right place at the right time doing the right thing with the right tools and the right support on your project, that’s your leadership skills. Saying thank you to people is a huge leadership tool that will help you get people on your next project working well for you. With that, we’ll just wish you all the best in your project management endeavors. Thank you very much for joining us here at UC Irvine. We appreciate your time. Thanks.