On Time! On Track! On Target! Managing Your Projects Successfully with Microsoft® Project

Chapter Twenty. Managing Project Completion

All love affairs end. Eventually, the girl is gonna put curlers in her hair.

— Al McGuire

When the solution deliverables in a project are complete, you might think the project is done. But you still have a few project management tasks to finish. Although the closeout phase of a project is short, don’t make the mistake of thinking it isn’t important. The key accomplishment during closeout is receiving formal acceptance that the project is complete from the project customer. After all, if the customer doesn’t consider the project a done deal, you aren’t really in the closeout phase.

Another critical task in closing a project is ensuring that the transition to whatever should happen next runs smoothly. For ...