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The purposes of closing a project are to:

a) get formal acceptance of the product, service, or result that is produced by the project,

b) get formal closure of the project activities, and

c) get the final update of documents for inclusion in the organization’s archive of records.

These can be understood in general to be covering the organization’s legal, financial, and administrative responsibilities towards the project, respectively. I am taking the detailed description of the closure activities as found in the Rita Mulcahy PMP exam guide and going into more detail about the processes that are involved. Our study group has used the Rita Mulcahy PMP exam guide and I heartily recommend it for those who want to get a fuller understanding of the interplay of the various project management processes described in the PMBOK® Guide.

Let’s look into each of these three areas and see what processes are involved:

1. Acceptance of the product, service, or result of the project

a) Confirm product conforms to project requirements

This is a function of quality control, and is the final iteration of the process 8.3 Perform Quality Control. Once the final deliverable is internally verified, then it goes to the next step.

b) Closure of procurement

If components of the product have been received and are functioning, then the procurement of those components from the contractor or supplier needs to be closed through the process 12.4 Close Procurements.

c) Formal acceptance of the product

This is the final iteration of the process 5.4 Verify Scope, where the sponsor (if it is an internal project) or customer (if it is an external project) takes the final deliverable that has been internally verified in step a) above, and gives a formal acceptance of it. If it is not accepted, then the organization must remedy this situation and the project cannot yet be closed.

2. Formal closure of the project activities

a) Complete financial closure

This is the point where you say you need no more of the company’s resources. Why is this important? For you, the project may be over. If you finished the project under budget, that may look good on your performance review, but remember that the company cannot utilize these unused resources until you do the financial closure which says those resources can now be reassigned to other projects. So this step is particular important for program managers and/or portfolio managers who must fund the other projects which they are responsible for, and may now be able to get additional resources that were not used on your project.

b) Complete final performance reporting

This is an extension of the process 10.5 Report Performance, where the stakeholders are involved about the results of the project and its closure. This can then prompt their feedback regarding the project, which goes into the next process. The most important stakeholder to hear back from would be, of course, the sponsor and/or customer.

3. Final update, archiving of project documents

a) If there were issues that came up during the project, or risks that materialized, the issue logs or risk registers would have been updated, as well as lists of change requests that were considered by the change review board, etc. All of these records are reviewed, and are included in the “lessons learned” knowledge base of the organization, in addition to the feedback about the project from the stakeholders mentioned in paragraph 2.b) above.

b) Archive records

These records are then kept as part of what the PMBOK® guide refers to as the Organizational Process Assets for use on future projects.

You can NOW say the project is done after this step!

All of the administrative parts of the closure process listed in section 3 above may not seem exciting, but they are an absolute gold mine of information for the next project manager who comes along and is assigned a project similar to yours. Or just imagine being assigned a project where there is NO “lessons learned’ knowledge base, and realize how much time you will have to spend reinventing the wheel, so to speak. This is why it is so important.

4. Summary

Here’s a summary of the three parts of the closure process

This covers the final 4.6 Close Project of Phase process in the Integration Knowledge Area.

I will now turn in the next series of posts to issues relating to the Scope Knowledge Area.

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