Anticlue

Closing Process Group

Project closure is an important part of the overall project lifecycle. It brings things to the ended state in a formal approved way. PMBOK defines the Closing Process Group as “Those processes performed to formally terminate all activities of a project or phase, and transfer the completed product to others or to close a cancelled project.
It’s a nice way to move the project into the normal business operations or review cancelled projects to gleam information from them.

Projects are cancelled for numerous reasons. A late start to a project can ultimately cause the project to cancel. Budget cuts can cause end the funding of a project and bring it to a pre-mature end. Having a project with an inadequate skillset can bring about the end of a project. Also having a plethora of project changes can result in draining the life from the project, causing a cancellation situation. Also the idea of with ultimate resources one can rebuild the pyramids or unrealistic project objectives bring about the cancellation of a project - at least in profit based organizations.

Whether a project is successful or not, it is good to record the lessons learned from the project. These lessons are feed from the successes and failures in the project. It is important to keep this information and inject the knowledge into other project, current and future.

The Closing Process Group coordinates project completion required to close or cancel a project and document the lessons learned. There are two key processes that need to be executed in closing activities:

• Close Project - Close Project is defined by PMBOK as: "The process of finalizing all activities across all of the Project Process Groups to formally close the project or phase." The Close Project process can be described as documenting administrative procedures for the completion of a project and preparing contract closeouts. For example updating the organization process assets within the configuration management database are typical project closing activities.
• Contract Closure – Contract Closure is defined by PMBOK as “The process of completing and setline the contract, including resolution of any open items and closing each contract” This is essentially the completion and settling of contracts.

A closed project may mean cause for celebration or a sigh of relief. It definitely means that the project phase has been completed, the project has been finished, or it was cancelled.