Guide to Project Planning of Project Closure
Planning End of Project for Smooth Transition to Operational Support
Jan 5, 2009
The end of the project is not with the project delivery of the software solution to the business users but with the transition of its ongoing responsibility to the support team, and project closure is accepted by the business. In some cases, that may be to the remaining elements of the project team and if so, management must ensure that project deliverables are produced to the same quality standard as if it were to a different team.
Project Planning for Project Closure
Project planning for project closure is concerned about ensuring the:
- Completion of project deliverables and transfer responsibility - software and documentation
- Cleanup of the IT environment - test, development, training
- Knowledge transfer to support team - design and function, maintenance tasks and making changes
- Tools and techniques for support team maintenance jobs
- Transition of ownership of training materials especially business user and user administration
- Transfer ownership of current state of benefits realisation - if not complete
- Formal closure of project - release all resources, close project budget, final report
Project Planning of Software Warranty Period
Project planning will often schedule a warranty period of somewhere between 30 and 90 days. This time period is immediately following the project delivery of the software to the business users and is intended to ensure that any unexpected problems can be dealt with quickly and efficiently by the experts who created the solution. This time period is also an opportunity to finish the project closure tasks.
Project Closure Tasks
Ideally a successful project will have completed all of the project deliverables, including documentation, to an appropriate quality standard. However, it is worth noting that the support team may believe that the documentation is not good enough for their purposes. This is primarily because:
- Focus for project team is to create a descriptive record as required by the project manager and the project quality plan
- Expertise gained during course of project leads to undocumented assumptions when writing content
- Project schedule may have been aggressive resulting in shortcuts taken with documentation or being out of alignment with final solution
- Project team members focused on finishing tasks and moving to next project
Support team focus will be:
- Complete set of documentation deliverables that are written clearly and comprehensively and with few or no assumptions about knowledge of solution
- Gaining practical knowledge of the solution, often by involvement during testing
- Knowledge transfer sessions with the project experts to seek direct explanation of the solution and any clarification of document deliverables
Business focus will be:
- Testing has completed satisfactorily
- Project has formally completed all of its deliverables and has met its scope and objectives
- Delivered solution is stable and works as expected
- Training material is up to date and accurate and can be easily updated as needed
- Business documentation is completed in support of solution
End of Project
Projects must complete the project closure tasks to end the project well. If not, there is the risk and perception that the project team will have runaway and left someone else to clean up the mess. A successful project will ensure that project planning includes all of these project closure tasks.
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