End Project Report

Here you can find a simple End Project Report template in Microsoft Word/Excel format, along with explanation on how to use it.

Download the Template

Background

Congratulations, you’ve finished the project!

Well, the End Project Report is also prepared when you close the project prematurely; so, I hope that’s not the case for you. But wait, isn’t it better to cancel a project that is not justifiable rather than continuing it and losing more money? Canceling projects is a sign of good project management, because when you’re not good at it, you won’t know that you should cancel the project.

What would you include in an End Project Report?

Some information about the products makes sense. But more importantly, there are usually open issues when we close the project, so we should create a list of follow-on actions, with a column for the owner. As the Project Manager, you may not know who’s going to be the owner, but leave the column there and let the Project Board, or someone else, fill it in.

Then, we can review the justification of the project for the last time; see what we expected and what really happened. It helps for the future projects. However, note that the Benefits Management Approach continues to live after the project, and there will be some people thinking about the benefits of the project and updating the information.

Also update the project objectives table; it’s a great piece of historical information.

Composition

These are the main sections of the template:

Document information: this is the generic information about the document and connections with your Configuration Management system. Feel free to add more information here, but it’s best to keep it simple.
Approval: this section is for capturing approvals. There are multiple lines, because you may have multiple versions of this document approved. If you have a well-formed Configuration Management system to track approvals, feel free to remove this section.
Justification: the final update of the justification of the project based on its Business Case. Project Objectives: the final update of the project objectives, mainly as historical information. Products: fill in the status of all products, especially their quality status and handover information. If you have a proper configuration management system, just get a report of it and attach it to this document instead (the name of that report is Product Status Account).
Team Performance: let’s be nice and praise the team a little ;)
Follow-On Action Recommendations: there are always open issues and unfinished work when we close the project. List them here, to be sure they will be done after the project is closed.
Lessons Learned: remember that we capture lessons throughout the project, and here we just report them. You probably prefer to attach your Lessons Log to the report, instead of adding them to this table, which is absolutely fine.

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