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MODULE 6 - PROJECT REVIEW

Learning Resources

Project Closure Phase

Closure is the nal stage in the project life cycle and is triggered when the sponsor
formally accepts the project. The objectives of this stage are to: transition the product,
services and deliverables to the project sponsor; logically complete administrative and
logistical close-out activities including contracts; release project resources and capture
performance information that will help improve future projects.

A project life cycle incorporates everything from the planning phases to the closing
activities that complete the work. Projects are temporary, meaning they have speci c
end dates slated for completion. The project conception, planning and execution stages
are the stages that make you feel like you are in the midst of it all but this nal stage
should not be passed over as something to be done quickly and with little thought. 

This stage is where you learn the lessons of how your project went.  You now have all
the real time data on the teams performance, the stakeholders contributions, the
accuracy of the estimations and all other aspects of the project.

Project closure activities ensure the product you created meets project requirements.
This project closure stage allows you to review the successes and shortcomings for
future reference.

The main thing you have been working towards throughout the entire project is the
completion of deliverables.  In the project closure stage you get to deliver them.  You
handover the deliverables to the client or sponsor.

Handing them over isn’t the end of it though, having them accepted by the client is a
formal process.  Having the deliverables accepted signi es that the customer agrees that

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the scope of the project and its deliverables are complete and were delivered as agreed
upon by all parties.

Acceptance is based on the success criteria de ned in the initiating and planning phases
of the project.

“Virtually every company will be going out and empowering their workers with a certain
set of tools, and the big di erence in how much value is received from that will be how
much the company steps back and really thinks through their business processes…
thinking through how their business can change, how their project management, their
customer feedback, their planning cycles can be quite di erent than they ever were
before.”
Bill Gates

Project Outcome Analysis

This analysis involves the project participants looking back over the project successes
and failures and it includes a comparison of the project’s practices and the planned and
actual outcomes. This can be done a number of ways.  You could conduct a group
meeting or hold individual interviews of the people who worked on the project.

The project’s actual outcomes are also compared against industry average results for
similar projects. It also compares the project’s practices against industry Best Practices
for similar projects.
The analysis bene ts project teams and project sponsors as it:

Allows teams to look back at a project after it has been completed to identify both
the positive and negative actions and gain an understanding of how these actions
in uenced the project outcomes

Provides a set of industry Best Practices that can be used to improve future
performance

Provides a set of lessons learned and/or recommendations based on the project’s

practices and outcomes and industry Best Practices that can be applied to future
projects

Provides a better understanding of the probable root causes for the good or poor
performance of this project to allow both the project team members and the
company as a whole to avoid the same mistakes on other projects

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All projects include documentation of the process, including the initial project
requirements, documentation of the development phases, and the testing records. Any
documentation related to the project should be retained for future reference if
necessary. All paperwork required for contracted services should be completed, as
should all nal payments and appropriate nancial documentation organised.

During the Close out stage a nal Project Report is produced and submitted for
approval.  All other relevant documentation is also closed and led for future reference.

As part of this post-project review you should review the outcomes of the scope
management process to gauge its e ectiveness.  Issues to consider include:

Did the project align adequately with the organisation's current business strategy?

Was the feasibility study robust, and were its outcomes accurate?

Was the project given an appropriate level of priority within the organisation?

Were enough resources available to successfully complete the project?

Were all of the project deliverables identi ed at the beginning of the project, and
were appropriate performance criteria identi ed for each deliverable?

Were the project's parameters, constraints and assumptions adequately identi ed

and documented?

Were all of the stakeholders identi ed at the beginning of the project, and were
they appropriately prioritised?

Were the stakeholders' requirements adequately identi ed and addressed?

Was an adequate risk analysis undertaken?

Did any undocumented scope creep occur?

Authority to close the project

Does the project manager and his team make the nal decision about when a project is
nished?

If you answered yes, you are wrong.  The nal decision is made by the project sponsor –
the client. The project manager conveys the results of the nal project review to the
sponsor who then o cially authorises the project closure.

Project Sponsor

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If you are a good project manager you would have involved your sponsor in the nal
stages of the project so that they are comfortable with the testings and reviews of all the
major deliverables and can see how the project is coming to an end.

They would have seen the formalities of the written acceptance procedure:

The completion checklist

The speci cation inspections and testings

Reviews and evaluations

You would be giving them all the information they need to take to the nal executive
meeting to formalise the closure and make all the nal acceptance reports and
payments. But the sponsor isn’t the only one who is involved in the formalisation of the
closure. 

Whilst the project team may feel the project is over once the deliverable is taken by the
sponsor, that possession is not necessarily an indication of closure. What happens if the
sponsor isn’t happy with the output?  Sponsor satisfaction must be taken into account at
this stage and there are a number of ways of gauging this.

The most honest approach would be to speak to the sponsor and ask them for honest,
open feedback on the project performance.  This could be in the form of a minuted
meeting or by completion of a project feedback form.

You would be asking questions such as these:

Was the project delivered as speci ed and in the timeframe predicted?  Were all
documents accurate and did the project manager and team when presenting
these instill con dence in their abilities?

Did the communication channels remain open at all times and did the sponsor
feel engaged in decision making?

Were all issues resolved in a win-win situation and was the sponsor happy with
how the project evolved over time?

Was the budget met?

Always nish the questioning with something along the lines of ‘what improvements
could the sponsor suggest in regards to future projects?

Project Stakeholders

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Remember that a stakeholder is ANYONE with a vested interest (positive or negative) in

the project’s outcome. They could be suppliers, contractors, government bodies, subject
matter experts, in fact anyone who you have dealt with on a professional basis
throughout the project.

At this point in the project their individual performance has to be reviewed to determine
what their value was to the project – that is whether they added to, or detracted from,
the overall project success or failure.

Each stakeholder should be questioned and as with the sponsors you could ask the
following types of questions:

Were they satis ed with their level of involvement and did they feel like they were
part of the team?

Did they feel they were consulted with adequately and were they kept informed of
the projects progress?

Did they feel valued for their expertise and experience and were they happy with
their role in decision making?

Finish again with questions about improvements for future projects.

Project Manager

And don’t think you, as project manager, are immune to evaluation.  Your job has been
to take control of all of this and be the single point of authority in managing the project.  
You are one step only down from the project sponsor and you’ve had a lot of work to do
and a lot of pressure to bear right throughout the process.

You need to debrief just the same as everyone else does!

All the questions you asked the sponsor and stakeholders can be asked of yourself as
well.

Did you feel satisfaction and support in all stages of the project lifecycle and with
all resources, processes and stakeholders?

How do you rank yourself in regards to your e ectiveness as a manager?

And again, nally, think about improvements you can suggest for future projects.

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One option to consider when bringingon a project manager for the rst time is to
consider someone who will not only deliver the project you have but also provide
foundations for the future.”
Lindsay Scott

Project Team

Yes, you’ve done a great job as project manager, but let’s get your head out of the clouds
for one moment to remember that you didn’t do it alone. You had a team.  They may not
be a team anymore, but they were a team, with a speci c goal and their opinions need
to be heard in this nal stage.

They made the project happen.  They dug the holes, cleaned the equipment, typed up
the documents; they know what it was all about right down at the roots. So ask them the
same questions you’ve asked before but tailor it to their particular duties.

Ask them about the workload, the level of skill required, the access to training if needed,
the management team and their interactions with it, the timeframes they were given,
the budget they were given and as always, nish it with suggestions for improvements.

Individual commitment to a group e ort -- that is what makes a team work, a company
work, a society work, a civilization work.
Vince Lombardi

Project Review and Lessons Learned

When all the project requirements are achieved, it is time to hand over the implemented
system and closeout the project. If the project deliveries are on par with the acceptance
criteria de ned by the sponsor, the project will be duly accepted and paid for.

After the project closeout takes place, it is time to review  the entire project. You have
gathered all the feedbacks during the stakeholder debrie ngs and now it’s time to
analyse it all and evaluate the projects overall success or failure. In this evaluation, the
mistakes made by the project team will be identi ed and necessary steps to avoid them
will be recommended to be taken in future projects.

Every project, large or small, will have ‘lessons learned’ from the analysis of the
debrie ng  feedbacks.  Identifying the lessons is one thing; documenting them is
another.  The information gleaned should be shared with all stakeholders in a nal

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report, or possibly even in a presentation or meeting, and that documentation led

away for reference material when the next project manager starts another project.

Remember, there is no sense collecting information and reporting on it if no one is ever

going to read it.  As we have said, the major reason for compiling a project close-out
report is to improve and consolidate the planning and management of future projects.

The report has nothing to do with any additional revisions or forward adjustments of the
project.  It is more a summary, a chronicle, of the project life cycle.  It will go through the
highs and lows, the successes and failures, in fact, the life and times of the project’s
journey through all the stages of it’s life – from conception to nalisation.

People are usually anxious to complete a project and start the next one and as a result
the termination phase is often neglected.  It is important that you don't lose all the
lessons learned and improvements made on the project.  It's a continuous improvement
opportunity, as no matter how carefully the project was planned and how well the
project outcome was received, there will be some lessons learned that you want to use
to use to inform future projects.

You need to critically review both of the following:

the way the project was implemented and conducted

the overall management processes used.

The production of a nal report is important.  The extent of the report will depend upon
the size and complexity of the project.  .
There are many styles of project close-out reports but they all contain the same basic
major elements:

Project This should be a thorough review comparing what the

performance project achieved with what the project set out to achieve
in the project scope.

Adminstrative This is a review of the adminstrative practices that helped

performance or hindered the project.

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Organisational This is a review of how the parent organisational structure

performance aided or impeded the progress of the project.

Project teams This revieew provides an opportunity to pro le the

performance of team members.

Project This review is of the project management approach

management adopted throughout the project.
techniques

The close-out report, once completed is a trigger for the nal “must do’s” for the project
manager.

These include:

Con rming and explaining actions required on outstanding work and agreement
and con rmation of responsibilities for ongoing work

Con rmation of who will monitor and report on project bene ts if that is required

Termination of all nancial documents, that is, completing all payments, money
collections and preparing nancial reports

Closure of all reporting systems

Updating of all asset registers

Archiving of all project les

Returning of all project equipment

Closure of all project sites and o ces and release of all remaining project sta .

Project Recommendations

It is the duty of the project manager to make recommendations to the organisation

regarding future projects and how they should be implemented and managed.

After review of the project performance against scope and other constraints, identi ed
variances and gaps in deliverables or quality need to be explained and corrective

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strategies taken must be documented with the resultant implications to the project
outcomes noted.

A project manager is basically asking:

What went right?

What went wrong?

What improvements can we make in future projects?

These gaps may  focus on (but not limited to):

project processes

time management

personnel performance

team cohesion

quality of work

quality of product

technical support

training and development

communication

cost or time estimations

budget administration

resource engagement

risk management

A recommendation written after gap analysis would explain the situation the gap
occurred in, or as a result of, the lesson learnt from that situation and then the process
or procedure recommended by you to ensure the situation is not repeated in future
projects.

Section Summary

A project is complete when it starts working for you, rather than you working for it.
Scott Allen

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Topic Resources

Post Implementation Reviews:

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_74.htm

Further Reading and Useful Websites

Examples of post project reviews can be found at:

http://www.utas.edu.au/project-management-methodology/project/closure-and-
review (Accessed 19th November 2015)

The Closing Phase of Project Management: 1:55 minute video at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txmfkr1r1HA (Accessed 19th November 2015)

How to write a project review videos can be viewed at:

Project Planning: How to Write a Postmortem Report - Project Management

Made Easy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJbWAeERakc (Accessed
19th November 2015)

How to write e ective project reports: 6:00 minute video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-vvrcQdpZQ (Accessed 19th
November 2015)

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