7 Steps Everyone Needs to Master the Project closure Process
Posted on Mar 03, 2023 at 08:03 PM
Many leaders and managers overlook the project closure phase once they have focused on planning and managing the project opening. Therefore, they may need help with completing this project.
Previously, the project closure phase referred to finalising and closing projects only. But now, its concept has expanded to include several tasks and steps that solve current problems and hand over the entire project to the client.
Therefore, this article will introduce you to the most common activities and steps needed during project closure.
What are the steps of project closure?
The last phase in the project management process is project closure. This phase consists of many phases, such as any road you want to follow. Here's a working example of these steps:
- Handover a project to a client:
The first step in the project closure phase is to hand over the project to the client. In other words, the client becomes the official owner of the project (he/ she becomes the owner of all project outputs, not just the primary keys).
Not only that, but the delivery of the project includes the preparation of training dedicated to customers on all the features of the project, how to operate it, and answering their various questions and problems; in the last phase, obtaining confirmation or an official document from the client stating the delivery of all project requirements, and ensuring that they work correctly.
- Termination of all documents and contracts concluded:
Before project closure, you will undoubtedly produce many essential project documents and templates. Once a project has been handed over to clients and you have formal confirmation, closing all pending records, reports, invoices, and taxes should begin.
These contracts are considered charter and legal proof that your project has been fully completed and with various parties, whether partners or clients.
- Measure customer satisfaction
After delivering a specific project, it is necessary to know the customer's opinion about the project and customer satisfaction with the actual results compared to the expected results.
It is helpful to convert customers from mere customers to advocates for your brand. Know that administering and conducting short questionnaires can be an effective way to get information from them.
These questionnaires should include many questions affecting the progress of your projects in the future. For example, did the results of the project meet their aspirations? Was the project delivered on time? Is the task easy to implement and operate? However, remember to make room for comments.
- Edit project resources:
At this phase, management releases all internal and external resources used to service the project. By leadership, we mean team members and partners as they are told to the project closure, then pay all dues, and get ready for other projects.
Experts advise paying financial dues quickly because it provides a disciplined and unbending team, especially when necessary. It also gives you the ability to project budget management effectively.
External resources may be easier to deal with than internal resources. The reason is that most external resources are temporary contracts at work, while internal contracts are mostly people employed with lengthy warranties that contain many complex terms.
- Review and benefit from project successes and failures:
It is one of the most essential and beneficial phases of project closure. It involves reviewing all failures and challenges to improve future projects.
This phase includes providing detailed project reports (DPR) on how all resources are allocated to the project (employees, money, time, etc.) to know the sources of waste in the project and address them in the future, thus increasing profits.
You can ask some questions of the employees who contributed to the completion of the project and include the answers in your report. For example, the questions below:
- What are the difficulties and obstacles faced by the team?
- What are the project's achievements, and what did it fail?
- Was the team's communication excellent and effective?
- What contributed the most to the success of the project?
- Was it well planned for the project closure on time?
- How closely did the project meet the customer's needs?
- The most important question is: how can work be improved in the future?
After this process, remember that identifying organisational failures does not mean blaming an employee. On the contrary, This phase is an excellent opportunity to teach employees how to benefit from mistakes and improve them so that projects in the future are completed in the best way and avoid repeating the same mistakes.
- Archive all project data:
The phases of the project closure do not end once it is handed over to the client and resources are released. Instead, there is a critical phase that many team leaders need to remember: archiving and maintaining all information and data related to the project.
But why did he keep the project documents even though it was finished?! The aim of this phase is as follows:
- Do feedback to avoid organisational mistakes and formulate better planning for the future.
- You may need project documents when facing any problem in the future related to one of the project participants (clients, partners, or employees).
- Any employee may need to return to the archive to find out how to solve current problems, which were resolved or similar issues were solved in previous projects.
- These documents may be searched by the legal team manager within your company if he/ she encounters legal problems with any decision or law in the company's country.
- Invoices, contracts, documents, valuable notes, and everything related to the project should start indexing early within the so-called project archive in companies. In this case, you can return to the library in the future and extract any information easily.
- Don't forget to celebrate:
At the end of a project's lifecycle, when it becomes complete, you and your team deserve a break and a celebration after putting in the effort and working on the project.
Funding the celebrations formally and fully formally is undoubtedly a successful way to show your appreciation for the team after the project's closure phase. In addition, celebrations help relieve stress and lift your employees' morale for future operations and tasks.
Finally,
Managing project closure is critical to projects of any type or size. Therefore, everyone should ensure that the previous steps are only the primary stages of the project closure process, and project management training online can help you with the project closure - any project - successfully, in a sound and more confident manner.
