Ten tips for managing the final stages of a project

• Tags:
• Training,
• Project Management

Bill Stronge

Published: 27 May 2008 10:57 BST

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Depending on the size of your organisation, you may treat project management casually or you may have an involved project-management office.

In either case, you probably go through the typical inception, elaboration and construction phases of a project. But, when it comes to the end of a project, many project managers come up just short of the finish line. Failure to handle the final steps well can add confusion to an initiative and may lead to customer dissatisfaction, unhappy staff and a project dragging on longer than necessary.

Here are a few things you should be thinking about when you get to the end of your next project. Some of these items are purely administrative, but many of them will help get you one step closer to ensuring that your project is successful.

1. Finalise testing
Testing can be a drain on people, and many of us don't like to do it, especially when it takes a few rounds. I have seen complex projects that were four to six months long have a day or two scheduled for testing. Not scheduling an adequate amount of testing usually results in problems occurring during the first few weeks of an implementation. Don't take a shortcut here and minimise the importance of testing; otherwise, you'll take on the additional risk of having a painful rollout.

2. Finalise training
Users? Who cares about users? Well, many projects are done for their benefit, so make sure you have all your testing materials completed and delivered. Failure to do so will most likely manifest itself in the form of angry phone calls from irate users in the middle of the night.

3. Validate deliverables
You may have checked all your boxes, cleaned out your inbox and really think you are done. But what does your customer think? Schedule time with customers to review all the deliverables and ensure they have been met. In some cases, there may be a few outstanding issues still unresolved when you get to your scheduled end date. Early on in your project, you should have made an agreement that determines how this will affect your end date if this situation occurs.

4. Get project sign-off
After you've agreed that all the deliverables have been met, request a formal sign-off on the project documentation. This helps ensure that everybody is in agreement on the state of the project. Since this sign-off usually signals the formal end of the project, be careful not to make your customers feel pressured into signing. If they do this without understanding what it means, you will probably end up with an unsatisfied customer if an issue arises at a later date.

5. Release the team
Now that the project is done, where is your team going? Depending on the organisation, they may be sent back to a development pool or into the business. Or maybe they need to go and drum up some work for themselves within the company. No matter what it is, make sure you spend time with them and set a clear end date for when you no longer need their services. Also, do not forget that you probably need to complete any performance-review documents that need to be added to their file.

6. Compare planned and actual results
Think about resources. Did you really get away with only one developer/tester for 10 weeks or did you need to scramble and get more people? What about the amount of time you scheduled for your business partners? Understanding how well you hit these targets will help you better allocate resources for your next project and set more realistic expectations when it comes to a project's duration.

Consider your budget. How much was the project going to cost? Did you come in on budget, under budget or over budget? Sitting down to understand the answers to these basic questions should give you some insight into a critical area of any project.

7. Archive documentation
During any project, huge amounts of documentation can be created. It can range from scope documents and project plans to contracts and meeting minutes. Whatever it is, when you are finished, you should have some place to keep the documentation, based on the retention policy of your company. It is wise to store such information in case your phone rings two years from now and somebody asks you to explain the rationale behind a choice you made during the course of the project.

8. Ensure contract closure
It's not unusual for a project to have its own budget. You also may have contracts for hardware, software or professional services. When you're done, make sure that you verify that all the terms of your contracts have been met, request final invoices from vendors and submit them to accounts payable, and close out any associated financial accounts, if necessary.

9. Conduct a post-mortem meeting
What types of risks did you identify and mitigate? What went really well that you want to ensure you do again next time? Have a meeting with all the project stakeholders and relevant participants to provide them with a forum to express any lessons learned.

10. Perform a self assessment
With all the hard work completed, you've made sure that all the i's have been dotted and all the t's crossed. Now what do you do? It's important to get some feedback on your performance from the people you interacted with during the project. If you have the opportunity to send out a 360-degree feedback survey to as many individuals as possible, I would recommend doing so. It will help you assess how you are progressing and will give you some useful direction in deciding which personal growth opportunities you should focus on.

This list won't be the same for everybody and will depend on your organisation and how it implements projects. But, if you implement the points on the list, it will always make the transition to the next project smoother.

Credit: 10 things you should do near the end of a project from TechRepublic.com

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