Project Management in Practice, 8th Edition

CHAPTER 8Evaluating and Closing the Project

We now come to the exciting final stage in any project—witnessing the result of all our project efforts! This usually consists of four sets of activities:

1. Evaluating the result of the project work relative to the (amended) project plan.
2. Closing down the project execution phase and writing the project plan closeout report by the PM.
3. Implementing the project results with the users for benefits realization.
4. And writing the final business case closeout report relative to the (amended) business case by the project owner.

Our emphasis here will be on the first two sets of activities. For more information on the final two sets that involve the project owner and users, see Meredith et al. (2018).

We discuss evaluation first, in the generic sense, and then discuss a very specific and often formal type of evaluation known as the “project audit.” We contrast the project audit with the more commonly recognized “financial audit.” We then describe the audit process, the audit report, and give some advice for conduction such an audit.

Following this, we discuss various ways of closing out the project, including the possibility of early closure which can occur for a variety of reasons such as a reduced market need for the output or a low expected return on the investment. Three major types of closure are “by extinction,” where the project is either ...