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In addition to transitioning the result of the project into the organization’s operations, projects often have accounts, systems, and resources that must be closed or disposed of before the project is fully closed.

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Quick reference

Administrative Closeout

In addition to transitioning the result of the project into the organization’s operations, projects often have accounts, systems, and resources that must be closed or disposed of before the project is fully closed.

When to use

Administrative closeout normally doesn’t happen until the end of the project.  On some large complex projects, there may be an administrative closeout of portions of the project when it is finished, even though the entire project is not yet finished.  Often this occurs when a program is divided into subprojects.  Each subproject is closed when the subproject activity finishes.  The closeout activities often occur after the project goals and objectives have been reached and stakeholders have accepted the project results.

Instructions

The project closeout activities will be unique to each organization.  Based upon the systems and organizations involved in both project work and sustaining work, the level of activity varies.  In addition, the unique nature of each project will lead to different levels of closeout requirements.  Since this activity usually occurs after the project deliverables have been transitioned to the business, it is often difficult to maintain core team members needed to do the administrative closeout.  Ensure that you include tasks or activities in your project plan for performing this work.

Normally there are four categories of closeout activity.  

Contracts closed

Some projects use supplier, vendors, or contractors to accomplish contract work.  The contracts need to be closed, a check to ensure all deliverables were received from the supplier, the deliverables were acceptable, and all invoices are paid.  Depending upon the industry, there may by compliance requirements that must be met with respect to contracts and contract records.

Systems and accounts closed

IT systems and financial systems often will set up special accounts for project activities.  For instance a project may have a special billing account in the finance system, a project account in a co-creation application, or an account in the email system.  Once the project is complete, these accounts need to be closed and any residual information or balances properly disposed of or archived.

Assets and resources released or terminated

Projects may procure or create capital or physical assets.  At the end of the project these need to be transferred to another project or to an operational department within the organization for accounting purposes.  In some cases the physical resources were obtained from a customer and are returned to the customer.  In some cases the physical resources are to be disposed or recycled. 

The human resources on the project team are also transferred.  They may be transferred to another project, they may be transferred to the operational department with responsibility for managing the project deliverables to become the SME on those deliverables, or they may be released from the organization.

Documentation completed and archived

In most industries today, archiving of some project documentation is a compliance requirement.  Depending upon your industry, location, and project type, selected project documents must be archived and retrievable at a later date from a knowledge management system.  At closeout you should review all project documentation to determine what, if any archiving requirements apply.  To do this, for each document you need to determine the purpose and audience for that document.  Then follow the industry or organizational policy for how that type of document must be archived including the nature of the archive, the length of time it must be retained, and any disposal requirements.

 

 

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  • 00:04 Hi, I'm Ray Sheen.
  • 00:06 I'd now like to talk about another aspect of project closeout and
  • 00:09 that's the Administrative Closeout.
  • 00:13 Close out isn't just a pizza party celebration.
  • 00:16 To closeout the project we obviously need to complete the work.
  • 00:20 We need the stakeholder acceptance of the project deliverables.
  • 00:23 Those deliverables need to be handed to the appropriate portion of the business so
  • 00:27 they can use it to realize the project benefits.
  • 00:30 And of course, we've already talked about doing a lessons learned session
  • 00:33 to continuously improve our project management methodology.
  • 00:37 We also have administrative closeout work that should be done.
  • 00:40 All the loose sense need to be tight off.
  • 00:43 For instance, any open contracts with suppliers, vendors,
  • 00:46 or even customers need to be closed out.
  • 00:48 Another administrative closeout activity is to closeout open accounts and
  • 00:52 the various business systems.
  • 00:54 They maybe cost accounts in the financial systems, email accounts,
  • 00:57 internal websites, or SharePoint sites.
  • 00:59 And of course there are resources to reassign, but
  • 01:02 I'll talk more about that on the next slide.
  • 01:04 Finally, there are often numerous files and reports that need to be completed and
  • 01:08 archived.
  • 01:09 While none of these tasks are hard to do, they all take effort and
  • 01:12 that needs to be managed.
  • 01:14 Let's talk about the release of the resources.
  • 01:17 Sometimes there is money left in the project budget.
  • 01:20 Yes projects do occasionally underrun.
  • 01:22 Finance needs to know that the money is available for other projects.
  • 01:26 Or the project was funded by a customer,
  • 01:28 the contract may require that the money to be returned.
  • 01:32 The next consideration is the release of human resources at the end of the project.
  • 01:36 This can be done in one of the three ways.
  • 01:38 In some cases, members of the project team will transfer to the operation unit within
  • 01:42 the organization.
  • 01:43 They'll be managing or using the project deliverables.
  • 01:47 They merely become the subject matter expert within that department
  • 01:50 on this new capability since they were part of the team that created it.
  • 01:53 The second option is to release the project resources on to other projects.
  • 01:58 As your project begins to wind down, there will probably be project leaders who
  • 02:02 are looking to get some of your people as soon as possible.
  • 02:06 You need to plan the transition so that as soon as each individual has completed
  • 02:10 their tasks, they're released to the new project but not before.
  • 02:14 The third option is to terminate the individuals.
  • 02:17 This is relatively easy to do at least administratively though not emotionally
  • 02:22 if the individuals are contractors or temporary employees.
  • 02:26 If the individuals are permanent employees make sure you bring in HR and
  • 02:30 you follow your organizational policies and
  • 02:32 procedures so that they get the severance benefits that they're entitled to receive.
  • 02:37 The release of physical resources normally requires some type of administrative
  • 02:40 hand off of the responsibility for that resource.
  • 02:43 This is especially true if the resource is listed
  • 02:45 as a business asset on the business balance sheet.
  • 02:48 Finance, must then be able to account for the asset with the tax auditors.
  • 02:53 Most of the time resources are handed of to another project
  • 02:56 they can use the facility or equipment.
  • 02:58 They are often happy together because it may save them both time and
  • 03:02 money to get the resources from you.
  • 03:04 In some cases the resources may be owned by the customer or supplier and
  • 03:09 the contract requires that the resources be returned to them.
  • 03:12 If there is no home for the resources it maybe sold, destroyed, or recycled.
  • 03:17 And often, there are organizational policies concerning how this must be done.
  • 03:21 The last topic I wanna discuss is archiving documents.
  • 03:25 Depending upon the work done on your project in your industry, there maybe
  • 03:29 policies, standards or laws that govern how project documents should be archived
  • 03:34 and how long they need to retained in either paper or electronic formats.
  • 03:38 Obviously, if there are rules, follow them.
  • 03:42 For some of your project documents, there may not be set policies or standards.
  • 03:46 When that is the case, determine for each document the purpose and audience for
  • 03:50 archiving it.
  • 03:51 What we mean by that is determine why some of them whenever
  • 03:54 want to review that document.
  • 03:56 Were they need it for reference on another project?
  • 03:58 Were they need it to show the decision process of the project team?
  • 04:02 A good way to help with that analysis is to identify who is the audience for
  • 04:06 the archived document?
  • 04:07 Who would ever recall or review it?
  • 04:10 Who will maintain it?
  • 04:11 Who has the authority to ultimately dispose of it?
  • 04:14 The answers to these questions will help you to decide if a document should be
  • 04:18 archived, and if so with what archiving process.
  • 04:22 Let's look at some of the conditions that may be determined
  • 04:24 when setting up an archiving process for documents.
  • 04:27 An obvious question is to determine if you need hard copy archives or electronic.
  • 04:32 Most documents today are created electronically, so
  • 04:35 electronic archiving is relatively easy.
  • 04:37 But there may be some project documents that only exist in paper format,
  • 04:41 such as letters from a customer or an external agency.
  • 04:44 If that's the case,
  • 04:46 you need to decide whether the documents need to be converted to electronic format.
  • 04:50 Another question is where the document should be archived.
  • 04:53 I don't just mean where are the file cabinets for paper archives.
  • 04:57 But with electronic archives, who's responsible for creating and
  • 05:00 maintaining the archives?
  • 05:02 How will they be stored?
  • 05:03 By date, by project task, by keyword topic, all of the above?
  • 05:07 And are there backups, and who is responsible for those?
  • 05:10 And of course there's the question of which project documents are archived?
  • 05:15 Some of the more common archive documents are project plans, project actual
  • 05:19 performance, stakeholder acceptance, lessons learned, technical documentation,
  • 05:25 risk log, estimates, contracts and external communications.
  • 05:29 The more you archive, the easier it will be for
  • 05:32 someone to reconstruct what happened on the project.
  • 05:34 But of course, the more you archive,
  • 05:36 the more work there is at the time of administrative closeout.
  • 05:42 Administrative closeout is often treated as an after thought on the project but
  • 05:46 it is real work that must be done.
  • 05:48 So, do it well.

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