Harvard Business Essentials Managing Projects Large and Small: The Fundamental Skills for Delivering on Budget and on Time

12

The Closedown Phase

Wrapping It Up

Topics Covered in This Chapter

• The value of the project closedown phase
• How to evaluate a finished project
• Documenting project work for future learning
• Using a special session to capture and pass along lessons learned
• Capping the project with a celebration

CLOSEDOWN should be the final phase of every project. At this point, the team delivers, or reports, its results to the sponsor and stakeholders and then examines its own performance. Managers are inclined to gloss over this phase since they are generally unaccustomed to closedown activities. After all, their regular jobs are ongoing. And being action-oriented people, they’re eager to move on without looking back once a job is finished.

Closedown is worth ...