Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme, Sixth Edition

Writing the Final Report

The final project report acts as the memory or history of the project. It is the file that others can check to study the progress and impediments of the project. Many formats can be used for a final report, but the content should include comments relative to the following points:

Overall success of the project — Taking into account all of the measures of success that you used, can you consider this project successful?

Organization of the project — Hindsight is always perfect, but now that you are finished with the project, did you organize it in the best way possible? If not, what might that organization have looked like?

Techniques used to get results — By referring to a project summary list, what specific things did you do that helped to get the results? Start this list at the beginning of the project.

Project strengths and weaknesses — What features, practices, and processes proved to be strengths or weaknesses? Do you have any advice to pass on to future project teams regarding these strengths and/or weaknesses? Start this list at the beginning of the project.

Project team recommendations — Throughout the life of the project, there will have been a number of insights and suggestions. This is the place to record them for posterity. Start this list at the beginning of the project.

The client should participate in the closing activities and in the post-implementation audit. Get their unbiased input and have them attest to its accuracy and validity by ...