Project Closure: Rolling Off the Right Way

By Chris Regis, PMP

Have you ever reached a project’s conclusion and just wanted to get final signoff and move onto your next assignment? The Closing Process Group involves finalizing all activities to reach administrative closure for the project. Some of these activities include contract closure, receiving and documents project feedback and releasing the project team. This phase does not have as many activities as the others, but it does include several that are useful in personal development and for creating documentation leveraged in future projects.

Although this phase allows for some reflection as well as giving positive or constructive feedback and properly documenting lessons learned, I have often seen it used as more of a tollgate exercise to mark the project complete so everyone can move on. Lessons learned during a project can be leveraged on other projects that are currently underway. This article will discuss how proper feedback and actionable lessons learned create value for all stakeholders.

Collecting and delivering individual feedback at the end of a project can be challenging, especially if the project failed or there were performance issues. Many project team members are already solicited to give performance related feedback for annual reviews and may not be as motivated to give feedback at the end of each project. A project manager must be able to demonstrate the value of feedback and how it is used in career and organizational growth. The following can aide in this process:

1.    Attempt to collect and share 360-degree with individuals. This involves all project team members and stakeholders. The employees who work for you, parallel to you and who you work for can all provide valuable feedback about your performance as a project manager. They can also provide valuable feedback about other stakeholders.

2.    Do not be afraid to share constructive feedback with stakeholders. What if a project failed because the customer could not agree on the scope or was unresponsive? These can be difficult conversations that need to be handled professionally. It is important to frame them as a learning opportunity for those receiving the feedback. Project team members should be made aware of how well they handled challenging situations that they might not have been able to control.

3.    Have a way to reward your project team members if the project is successful or if they worked exceptionally hard. This can take many forms including monetary awards or recognition in front of an audience. It is very discouraging to work hard, achieve the desired outcome and then not be thanked or recognized in some way. This can be taken into account during project planning if budgets and other factors are involved.

While personal feedback focuses more on individual performance, there are challenges we face on projects that serve as learning opportunities that can benefit a different project team or the organization as a whole. We are often working on multiple, sometimes similar projects at once. Broad lessons learned can be applied to other in-flight projects immediately rather than always waiting until the project ends to document them. The challenge lies in having actionable items that can be easily applied to other current and future projects. The following points can aide in making sure that lessons learned are effective.

1.     Lessons learned should include situational examples of what risks the team faced and how they were overcome. Documenting something like, “The project team faced an unexpected risk and came together to deliver with quality.” does not give enough detail in order for it to be useful on another project. What was the risk? How did the team come together? Give more detail on the actionable steps taken to mitigate the risk so that they can be applied more broadly.

2.     There are some basic questions to consider when documenting what occurred on a project at a team and organizational level. What went well for the team? What didn’t go well? What were the biggest challenges the team faced, and how did they respond? If a particular team or strategy work well together, it makes sense to align the same team again or to utilize the same project management strategy.

3.    Project managers need to be aware of how a lesson learned during project execution can be applied to other projects currently underway. We often wait until a project has ended to document all lessons learned, but by that time, project teams are already working on new things. A different team may not be as motivated to review historical documentation before a new project starts. Lessons learned need to be treated as a current actionable review item rather than documentation that is stored away and ignored.

There is clearly a lot more that a project manager can get out of the last phase than just administrative closure. Strong project planning and execution also make closure activities much easier. We should always ask ourselves what we learned on a project that can make our other endeavors more successful. Giving the appropriate individual feedback and using lessons learned on other ongoing projects will allow an organization to grow from its experiences.