Why Most Projects End in Oblivion and How to Close Them with Impact

Many projects end in oblivion rather than with a bang. Stakeholders often lose their initial enthusiasm, shifting their focus to new projects. This results in valuable insights being overlooked throughout the project timeline.

Why Do Projects Get Ignored?

Closing a project can feel like mere paperwork, but as a project manager, it is crucial to:

• Close the project effectively

• Document lessons learned

• Enhance professional growth and credibility

The Three-Phase Closure Framework

Wrapping up a project includes:

• Production Validation: Confirm deliverables and identify gaps.

• Operational Closure: Ensure all deliverables are transferred and stakeholders sign off.

• Administrative Closure: Close contracts, release resources, and handle final invoicing.

• Learning Closure: Extract and document insights for future projects.

Four Essential Closure Activities

Consider these activities for effective closure:

• Stakeholder Debrief Sessions: Conduct sessions 2-3 weeks post-project to gather insights and celebrate successes.

• Team Retrospective: Identify action items and recommend process improvements.

• Knowledge Transfer Documentation: Record decisions, vendor contacts, and workarounds for future reference.

• Success Metric Analysis: Compare actual results to original objectives six months later.

Provide Lessons Visibility

A financial services company learned valuable lessons after a critical system migration that was late and over budget. They invested time in thorough closure, leading to significant insights that improved future projects.

Key Discoveries: Vendor communication breakdowns and inadequate testing environments caused delays, saving time and money on future projects.

Tip: Create a searchable database of project insights organized by project type.

When planning similar projects, teams can quickly find relevant lessons instead of repeating expensive mistakes. There’s plenty of software support available to enhance this visibility. For example, Atlas by Clear People offers a way to automate lessons learned for easier access.

Insight: Project closures hold valuable learnings.

While project closures can be boring, they contain an untouched resource of valuable insights. The lessons from today’s projects become tomorrow’s competitive advantage. Therefore, take your project closures as seriously as kickoffs to become a stronger project manager.