Lesson 13: Closing a Project Process
This process is used in two different situations. Can you explain what?
Based on AXELOS PRINCE2® material. Reproduced under licence from AXELOS. All rights reserved.
Note: PRINCE2 2017 edition is now called PRINCE2 6th edition.
- 00:09 – The Closing a Project Process or CP process for short
- 00:14 – The CP process is the last of the seven processes and it’s facilitated by the Project Manager
- 00:21 – So this process happens at the last part of the last stage
- 00:26 – And the purpose of the process is as follows
- 00:30 – First, to provide a fixed point where acceptance for the project product is confirmed
- 00:37 – To check that the objectives set out in the original PID have been achieved
- 00:42 – So the objectives in the original Project Plan mainly and the Business Case
- 00:47 – Check if the project has nothing more to contribute
- 00:51 – For example, check that all must-haves and perhaps all the should-haves have been delivered
- 00:57 – Now let’s take a look at the objectives
- 01:00 – The first objective, verify user acceptance of the project’s products
- 01:05 – So the Project Manager here will go over the acceptance criteria that was included in the project product description
- 01:15 – Next objective, to ensure that the organization is able to support the products when the project is disbanded
- 01:22 – Now, in some projects, maybe part of the solution has already been deployed at the end of each stage
- 01:30 – So this is already supported, so this will be different let’s say for different projects
- 01:36 – Three, to review the performance of the project against its baselines
- 01:41 – So review the performance against mainly the Business Case and the Project Plan
- 01:46 – Four, to assess the benefits that have already been realized during the project
- 01:53 – And this may happen is some projects, for example, IT projects
- 01:57 – And five, update the Benefits Management Approach document to include post-project benefit reviews
- 02:06 – So here, the Corporate, Programme or Customer will follow up on these benefits after the project is disbanded
- 02:15 – Next, ensure that provisions have been made to address open issues and risks with follow on action recommendations
- 02:22 – So for example, issues can contain some maintenance work that should be done as soon as possible
- 02:30 – So that’s an overview of the CP objectives, which gives a good summary actually of this process
- 02:38 – The Closing a Project Process has a number of activities, and I will start with the trigger
- 02:44 – In fact, there are two triggers, but I will start with the normal one
- 02:48 – So the normal trigger for this process is that the project is approaching the end of the last stage and almost all of the project products have been delivered
- 02:57 – The other trigger to start this process is when the Project Board requests to close the project while the project is running
- 03:05 – And this is called a Premature Close; for example, if the Business Case is no longer valid
- 03:11 – The Project Manager will then prepare premature closure
- 03:16 – So they update the Project Plan to show what has been done and salvage any completed work that may be useful for future projects
- 03:26 – The first activity then is to prepare plan closure
- 03:29 – So the Project Manager mainly does two things here
- 03:33 – They update the Project Plan to show what has been delivered
- 03:37 – And they check the user’s acceptance criteria has been met
- 03:42 – The next activity is to hand over the products to operations and maintenance
- 03:47 – So in some projects, the handover can already have started to happen at the end of stages
- 03:55 – The next activity, evaluate the project
- 03:58 – So here the Project Manager will look at the performance of the project and create the End Project Report
- 04:05 – So, they will compare some of the documents between or from the start of the project and the end of the project
- 04:12 – Mainly the Business Case and the Project Plan
- 04:16 – And the last activity will be prepare project closure
- 04:20 – So the Project Manager does this after they believe that the project can be closed
- 04:26 – So the Project Manager then will send a closure recommendation request to the Project Board
- 04:33 – Then it’s up to the Project Board to decide to close the project, which will be their last decision in the project
- 04:41 – The inputs and outputs
- 04:43 – Due to the End Project Report and the activities, the majority of documents can be seen as inputs to this process
- 04:52 – And the outputs are the End Project Report, the Lessons Report which will be given to future projects
- 04:58 – And the Benefits Management Approach document is also updated to plan post-project meetings
- 05:05 – So that’s it for the Closing a Project process
- 05:09 – Just a quick reminder of the purpose of this process
- 05:12 – One, provide a fixed point of acceptance of the project product
- 05:17 – Two, check if the objectives from the PID have been achieved
- 05:22 – And three, check to see if the project has nothing more to contribute
Well, we’re done with the processes. We’ll have a quick overview of the PRINCE2® structure in the next lesson, before finishing the second iteration.
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