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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 the 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 suppliers, 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 be 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 of 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 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, I'd now like to talk about another aspect of project close out
  • 00:08 and that's the administrative close out.
  • 00:10 Close out isn't just a pizza party party celebration.
  • 00:14 To close out the project, we obviously need to complete the work.
  • 00:18 We need the stakeholder acceptance of the project deliverables.
  • 00:21 Those deliverables need to be handed off to the operational
  • 00:24 portion of the business so that they can use them and realize the project benefits.
  • 00:29 And of course, we've already talked about doing a lessons learned session to
  • 00:33 continuously improve on our project management methodology.
  • 00:36 We also have administrative closeout work that needs to be done.
  • 00:40 All the loose ends need to be tied off, for instance,
  • 00:43 any open contracts with suppliers, vendors or even customers need to be closed out.
  • 00:49 Another administrative closeout activity is to close out
  • 00:52 open accounts of various business systems.
  • 00:55 There may be cost accounts in the financial system,
  • 00:58 email accounts, internal websites or SharePoint sites.
  • 01:02 And of course, there are the resources to reassign, but
  • 01:05 I'll talk about that in the next slide.
  • 01:07 Further, there are often numerous files and reports that need to be completed and
  • 01:11 archived.
  • 01:12 While none of these tasks are hard to do, they all take time and effort and
  • 01:17 they need to be managed.
  • 01:19 Let's talk about the release of resources.
  • 01:21 Sometimes there's money leftover in the project budget,
  • 01:25 yes projects do occasionally under run.
  • 01:27 Finance needs to know that this money is now available for other projects.
  • 01:31 Or if the project was funded by a customer,
  • 01:34 the contract may require that the money be returned.
  • 01:38 The next consideration is that of the release of Human Resources at the end of
  • 01:42 the project, this can be done in one of several ways.
  • 01:46 In some cases, members of the project team will transfer to the operating unit within
  • 01:50 the organization that will be managing or using the project deliverables.
  • 01:55 They immediately become the subject matter experts within that department on this new
  • 01:59 capability since they were part of the team that created it.
  • 02:02 The second option is to release the project resources onto other projects.
  • 02:07 As your project begins to wind down, there will probably be project leaders
  • 02:11 who are looking to get some of your people assigned as soon as possible.
  • 02:14 You need to plan that transition so that as soon as each individual has
  • 02:19 completed their tasks they're released to the new project.
  • 02:23 The third option is to terminate the individuals on your team.
  • 02:27 This is relatively easy to do, at least administratively, though not emotionally.
  • 02:32 If the individuals are contractors or temporary employees, cancel the contract.
  • 02:36 If the individuals are permanent employees, make sure you bring in HR so
  • 02:40 that you follow your organization's policies and so
  • 02:44 that your team members get the severance benefits that they're entitled to receive.
  • 02:49 The release of physical resources normally requires some
  • 02:52 type of administrative handoff of the responsibility for that resource.
  • 02:56 This is especially true if the resource is listed as a business asset on the business
  • 03:01 balance sheet.
  • 03:02 Finance must be able to account for their assets with the tax auditors.
  • 03:07 Many of the times the resources are handed off to another project that can use
  • 03:11 the facility or the equipment.
  • 03:12 They're often happy to get it because it may save them both time and
  • 03:16 money to get that resource from you.
  • 03:18 In some cases the resources may be owned by the customer or supplier, and
  • 03:22 the contract requires that the resources be returned to them.
  • 03:26 If there is no new home for the resource, it may be sold, destroyed or recycled.
  • 03:32 Often there are organizational policies concerning how this should be done.
  • 03:36 The last topic I want to discuss is archiving documents.
  • 03:39 Depending upon the work done on your project and
  • 03:42 your industry, there may be policies, standards or
  • 03:45 even laws that govern how project documents should be archived and
  • 03:49 how long they need to be retained in either paper or electronic format.
  • 03:53 Obviously if there are rules, follow them.
  • 03:56 For some of your project documents there may not be set policies or standards.
  • 04:01 When that's the case, determine for each document the purpose and audience for
  • 04:04 archiving it.
  • 04:06 What we mean by that is determine why someone would even want to review this
  • 04:10 document again in the future.
  • 04:12 Would they need it for reference on another project?
  • 04:15 Would they need it to show the decision process of the project team?
  • 04:18 A good way to help with this analysis Is to identify who is the audience for
  • 04:23 the archive document who would ever recall or review it.
  • 04:27 Who will maintain it?
  • 04:28 Who has the authority to ultimately dispose of it?
  • 04:31 The answers to these questions will help you decide if a document should
  • 04:36 be archived, and if so, with what archive process.
  • 04:39 Let's look at some of the considerations that must be determined When setting up
  • 04:43 an archiving process for documents.
  • 04:45 An obvious question is to determine if you need hard copy or electronic.
  • 04:50 Most documents today are created electronically, so
  • 04:52 electronic archiving is relatively easy.
  • 04:55 But there may be some project documents that only exist in paper format,
  • 04:58 such as letters from customers or external agencies.
  • 05:02 If that's the case, you need to decide whether the document should be converted
  • 05:05 into electronic format.
  • 05:07 Another question is where the documents should be archived.
  • 05:11 I don't just mean where the file cabinets for paper archives, but
  • 05:14 with electronic archives who's responsible for creating and maintaining the archives?
  • 05:19 How will they be stored, by date, by project task, keyword topic,
  • 05:23 all of the above?
  • 05:24 Are there backups, and who is responsible for those?
  • 05:27 And of course there's the question we already discussed of which project
  • 05:31 documents are archived.
  • 05:32 Some of the more commonly archived documents are project plans,
  • 05:36 project actual performance results, stakeholder acceptance, lessons learned,
  • 05:41 technical documents, risk logs, estimates, contracts and external communications.
  • 05:47 The more you archive, the easier it will be for
  • 05:50 someone to reconstruct what happened on the project.
  • 05:53 But of course, the more you archive,
  • 05:55 the more work there is at the time of administrative closure.
  • 06:00 Administrative closeout is often treated as an afterthought on the project, but
  • 06:05 it is real work that must be done, so do it well.

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