Project Management: Closing: Guiding questions and tips

 

Project closing consists of ensuring the team completes all project work, executing any remaining project management processes, and obtaining stakeholder recognition that the project is complete. 

These guiding questions and tips, compiled by dozens of project managers, can help you ensure your team collaborates successfully to produce work that everyone can be proud of.

Why closing matters

Closing a project thoroughly helps you, your team, and your organization avoid potential issues. A thorough project closing provides assurance that:

• All work has been completed.

• All agreed-upon project management processes have been executed.

• Everyone involved recognizes formally that the project is complete.

Follow these tips to ensure all tasks are completed and that everyone involved understands the project has closed: Conduct administrative closure of the procurement process. Conduct a formal closing process after the final project phase or milestone. Complete and present an impact report. Document acceptance from all stakeholders to confirm that they are happy with the deliverables and outcomes. Formally disband and thank the project team.

Retrospectives

It’s important to discuss successes, failures, and possible future improvements on the project. 

Tips to help you run a retrospective Create a safe space for team members to share their experiences and feedback. Model the kind of behavior and responses you’d like to elicit from the team. Phrase questions in a non-confrontational way. Rather than “What went wrong?” and “What went well?”, try asking, “What about this project should we start, stop, and continue?” Remind your team of the different milestones they reached over the course of the project to spark more discussion about the entire project.

Demonstrate your impact

In addition to closing out your project, it's important to showcase the work of your team and the impact the project had on the organization. 

• Present the project’s impact through storytelling, data, and visualizations.

• Invite key stakeholders and senior leadership to your impact report presentation. 

• Amplify your outcome: in addition to presenting your impact to key stakeholders and senior leadership, consider other outlets for sharing your project’s impact, such as at a company all-hands meeting or in a newsletter or at a meeting with another team that could benefit from the lessons learned from your project.

Celebrations

It is important to help a team celebrate the end of a project in a way that is appropriate for the project and company. Celebrations help the team feel recognized and rewarded for all of their hard work.  

Some ways project managers can celebrate wins include:

• Publicizing the project’s successful outcome within your company or organization.

• Requesting a speaking slot at a team or company all-hands meeting to spotlight the project and team.

• Organizing a celebration event for the project team.

• Recognizing individual contributions through awards or superlatives.

• Leveraging employee recognition programs at your company or organization.

Develop project documentation

Documenting and organizing project components provides visibility and accountability. It's common for project team members and senior stakeholders to reference and contribute to your project documents throughout the project. 

📔 Impact report Created for senior stakeholders or project sponsors at the end of the project Demonstrates the project’s value to those who were not directly involved 🔖 What’s in an impact report? Executive summary Results What worked Next steps 📔 Closeout report Created by project managers for project managers A blueprint that documents what the team did, how they did it, and what they delivered Provides an evaluation of the quality of the work  Evaluates the project’s performance with respect to budget and schedule 🔖 What’s in a closeout report? Summary Methodology Results Lessons learned Next steps Project documentation 🔗 Download a closeout report template

Project Management: Execution: Guiding questions and tips

 

Project execution is where your plans get put into action and the actual work of the project gets underway. 

These guiding questions and tips, compiled by dozens of project managers, can help you ensure your team collaborates successfully to produce work that everyone can be proud of.

Communication

A major part of project execution is communicating the project’s progress to ensure the end result is a success. It’s important that you communicate information consistently and coherently so that everyone understands the current state of the project, what they should be focusing on, and what happens next.

Ask your stakeholders and team members how they prefer to be communicated with. For example:

• Email

• Face-to-face (in person or via videoconference)

• Messaging app (Google chat, Slack, etc.)

• Written reports or updates

Maintaining project quality 

Quality is when you fulfill the outlined requirements for the deliverable and meet or exceed the needs and expectations of your customers.

Quality standards

There are a lot of of resources that can help you determine the standards for your project, including:

• Project documents, like the business case and project charter. These documents state the goals, scope, budget, and other details that can clarify the different requirements of the project so it’s acceptable to your stakeholders.

• Conversations with experts and stakeholders. It’s also a good idea to have conversations with the stakeholders who are funding the project to understand their perspective on quality.

• Online research about industry standards.

Quality assurance

Be sure to include regular quality assurance audits to confirm that everything is going according to plan and the necessary procedures are being followed. Regular check-ins and reporting to stakeholders will help boost their confidence--and yours--along the way.

Phased launches

A phased launch allows you to present part of your project to end users and clients before you’ve achieved the end goal in order to collect data and feedback that can improve your final result. Here are two common ways to launch before you really launch:

• Minimum viable product: An MVP is the bare minimum version of your product that still solves a problem for your customers. It should help validate your idea by allowing you to gather the most customer data possible with as little effort as possible. It answers the question: do people want this?

• Beta: A beta product is not an experiment; it’s a real product with fewer features than your full launch. It can help you determine which features to add. It answers the question: how can we build it better?

Choosing a project management approach

Different types of projects will benefit from applying different project management approaches or methodologies. There are many different approaches to choose from that will help you manage your project effectively.

Use a Waterfall approach for linear projects Linear projects don’t require many changes during development and have a clear, sequential process.  The Waterfall approach is linear and involves the sequential ordering of phases, completing one at a time.  A project may benefit from a Waterfall approach when: The phases of the project are clearly defined There are tasks to complete before others can begin Changes to the project are very expensive to implement once it’s started

Use an Agile approach for iterative projects Iterative projects allow for more flexibility and anticipate changes.  Agile project management is iterative, flexible, and incorporates necessary changes throughout the process.  The benefits of an Agile approach are: Getting customer feedback more quickly than in a traditional project management approach  Working more efficiently by streamlining work processes without reducing quality or value Proactively reducing waste and conserving resources The ability to respond quickly to rapidly-changing business or technological factors  Encouraging trust, support, and motivation and empowering decision-making within the team.

Implementing Scrum

Scrum is an Agile project management framework. Using Scrum involves forming a team that works together to quickly develop and test a deliverable. 

Scrum Artifacts, Events, and Roles Product Backlog: The central artifact in Scrum, where all possible ideas, deliverables, features, or tasks are captured for the team to work on. Sprint: A timeboxed iteration in Scrum where a planned amount of work is done. Daily Scrum: A brief meeting of up to 15 minutes that takes place every day of the Sprint to inspect progress toward the goal. Development Team (Developers): The people who do the work to build the product. Product Owner: The role responsible for owning and prioritizing the inventory of work. Is also responsible for maximizing the value of the product and the work of the team.  Scrum Master: The role responsible for ensuring that the team lives Agile values and principles, follows the processes and practices they agreed to, shares information, and focuses on doing their best work.

Project Management: Planning: Guiding questions and tips

Planning is a significant part of ensuring a project’s success. While planning your project, you and other members of the team will determine the processes and workflows needed to meet your goals and put together ideas about how to make the project a success.

These guiding questions and tips, compiled by dozens of project managers, can help you determine what goes into a project plan, who to talk to, and how to approach and organize conversations.

Get to know your team

Start by getting to know anyone on your immediate team with a short introduction or coffee chat. 

These guiding questions can help you start to develop relationships with your team:

• Have you ever worked on a project like this before? If so, what did you do? Do you expect to do that here?

• Are you expecting to do any tasks on this project or just give input or review information? Do you expect to delegate tasks to others or do them yourself? 

• What are you hoping to gain from working on this project? Do you have particular strengths that you want to demonstrate? New skills you want to gain? How will it contribute to your desired career path?

• How can I, as the project manager, best support you on this project? 

Also, feel free to ask a few personal questions. It helps to get to know others as people, including what they care about. Strong personal relationships are an asset to any project.

Identify milestones and tasks

When setting milestones, review your project charter, business case, and the description of the project. Ask what steps need to be completed to reach each milestone and who needs to complete them.

Tips to help identify milestones  Identify places within the project when: Success metrics can be tested A certain type of work is completed A certain type of resource is no longer being used Stakeholders want updates A large percentage of the budget is being spent There is cause for celebration

These guiding questions can help you identify tasks:

• Are there any tasks that can be broken down into smaller tasks? 

• Are there tasks with no single clear owner? 

Tips to manage tasks Meet with the team as a group if it is smaller than five people. On larger teams, create subgroups to talk through a project and source ideas about tasks and deadlines. Identify tasks that are potential "blockers" or "dependencies,” meaning that other tasks are unable to move forward until the previous task is complete.   Highlight these in the project plan and check their progress frequently. Keep the team informed if one of these key tasks will change the start date of other tasks.   Alert team members when a delay in the completion of one of their assigned tasks may end up blocking another team member’s work. This can help team members prioritize tasks and creates peer accountability.

Estimate task duration

When working with experts to estimate how long it will take to complete tasks: 

1. Ask the expert to break the task down:

• What steps are involved in the task?

• How long do you estimate each of the smaller steps will take? 

Add up the time estimated for the smaller steps to determine an estimate for the total time needed for that task.

2. Question expert assumptions: 

• What resources do they assume are available? Which materials? Which people?

• How skilled do they assume people are?  

• How likely is it that some assumptions will not materialize? How would that impact their estimates?

• Are there steps or other tasks they assume are being completed before this task has begun?

3. Ask the expert to describe a similar project they worked on: 

• How was it similar? 

• How was it different? 

• How long did it take? 

• Does comparing that project to the current one change their estimate at all? 

Develop project documentation

Documenting and organizing project components provides visibility and accountability. It's common for project team members and senior stakeholders to reference and contribute to your project documents throughout the project. 

📔 Project plans Document the scope, tasks, milestones, and overall activities of the project Can streamline team tasks and communication Help you plan future projects 🔖 What can be included in a project plan? Project name  Description of project Project owners (RACI) Project status Tasks and milestones Timelines and schedule Budget  Communication plan Resources and references Quality and evaluation plan Risk mitigation plan Statement of work 🔗 Download a project plan template