The last stage of the life cycle is close out. During the closing stages, the team must maintain their vigilance to ensure the work is completed and it is completed in a timely and efficient manner. It is easy for the good effort of execution to be lost as some team members look forward to the next project and others become demob happy or demob unhappy. During this stage, the team's focus must switch back to the project's purpose. During execution, the team concentrates on doing the work within time, cost, and specification. Now they must remember why they are undertaking the project; they are not doing the work for its own sake, but to deliver beneficial change. It is easy to complete the work within the constraints and think that it is a successful project, while failing to use the new asset to deliver the change and obtain the expected benefits, which justified the money spent. There are projects where the new asset is not used properly and no benefit obtained. There are many more where it is used to less than full capacity and the project team does not see it as their responsibility to ensure it is. They are more interested in their next project. At this time, the project team must also remember that it may be the closing stage of the project but it is the start of the operational life of the asset. Adequate mechanisms must be put in place to support it through its life.
As the project comes to an end the team disbands. If the project is completed efficiently, the team may be rundown over some time. As this happens, it is important to ensure it is done in a caring way. Team members may have made significant contributions, or even sacrifices, to the success of the project. If this is not recognized, at best the project will end on an anticlimax, and at worst it will leave lasting resentment which will roll over into the next project. You must ensure the team members are given due reward for their contribution and that the end of the project is marked appropriately.
Finally, there is data to be recorded or lessons learnt for the operation of the facility, or for the design, planning, estimating, and management of future projects. Because the team's attention may be focused on completing the task and looking forward to the next project, this often remains undone. Completing records of the last project is a distraction from the next. It also costs money, spent after the asset has been commissioned, so it provides no immediate benefit. It is money which can be easily saved, especially if the project is overspent. However, it is precisely when a project is overspent that it is important to find out why that happened, so the information can be used for the planning and estimating of future projects.
In this chapter, I describe how to bring the project to a timely and efficient completion. I then explain how to hand the facility over to the users, while ensuring that it is fully commissioned to obtain the benefits and that a proper support mechanism is put in place as it moves into its operation phase. I describe how to disband the project team in a caring way and identify the key data to be recorded at the end of the project, how it is obtained and the purpose for which it is used. This is the second most critical stage of a project. Nobody remembers effective start-up, but everyone remember ineffective close out; the consequences are left to be seen for a long time.
14.1 TIMELY AND EFFICIENT COMPLETION
As the project draws to a close, the team must ensure all work is completed in a timely and efficient manner. The following can aid this process:
Producing checklists of outstanding work
Planning and controlling at lower levels of work breakdown to provide tighter control
Holding more frequent control meetings to ensure problems are identified and solved early
Planning the rundown of the project team as the work runs down to ensure people are released for other work
Creating a task force with special responsibility for completing outstanding work
Closing contracts with suppliers and subcontractors to ensure that no unnecessary costs are booked
Supporting the project manager by a deputy with finishing skills
Planning and Control at a Lower Level of Breakdown. As you near the end, you begin to look at what needs to be done to complete outstanding work. Instead of waiting two weeks to find out what work has been achieved, you create daily lists of work to complete the asset, hand it over to the client and commission it. This leads naturally to planning at a lower level of work breakdown and holding more frequent control meetings. Towards the end, the risk of delay becomes greater and so it becomes necessary to review progress more frequently, weekly, daily, or even twice daily. I suggested in Chap. 5 that whatever the frequency of control, that should be the average duration of activities, and hence you plan against shorter tasks. The checklists are just more detailed plans.
Disbanding the Team and Forming Task Forces. As the project nears its end, you require fewer resources. This is what gives the S-curve its shape. To ensure the most efficient completion, you must plan the release of resources in advance. You do not want them turning up one day, and sitting around until you realize they are not needed, because that is inefficient for both the project and the organization as a whole. You tell people one or two weeks in advance they will not be required on a certain date. You also tell their line managers, so they can make full use of their people when they are released.
As the teams run down it becomes essential to combine the members into task forces to retain natural hunting packs. David Frame describes task forces created at the end of a project as surgical teams.1 The surgical team is a cross discipline team able to work together to complete the daily task lists and tie up other lose ends.
Closing Contracts. Closing contracts with suppliers and subcontractors is another way of planning the rundown of the project team (see Example 14.1).
Manager with Finishing Skills. The skills required to finish a project can be different to those required to start it up and run it. Therefore it may be appropriate to change managers in the final stage (Sec. 6.3). However, if this change is to be seamless the new manager ought to be a former deputy who has been involved for some time. One approach is to have a single project manager for design execution and close out with a deputy for each of design, execution, and close out, a design manager, execution manager, and commissioning manager, respectively.
Example 14.1 Closing account numbers and contracts
A delegate on a course told me he had been telephoned by the accounts department two years after a project had been finished to be told it was overspent. He was asked what he was doing about it. He asked how this could be because the project had finished two years previously, it was underspent then, and no further work had been done. The accounts department said people were still charging their time. The project manager said that there was nothing he could do to stop people charging time and asked the account department why didn't it close the account numbers. They said it was against company policy and it was his duty to make people stop charging their time!!! It wouldn't happen to Dilbert.
14.2 TRANSFERRING THE ASSET TO THE USERS
Key issues in transferring the new asset to the users are discussed in following sections.
Planning for the Transition. There must be a clear understanding of how responsibility for the facility is to transfer from the project manager to the operations manager. Often from a safety perspective, it must be clear when this handover takes place. This will happen during the commissioning process, which should be planned at a lower level of work breakdown than its fabrication.
Ensuring that the Users Accept the Product. I spoke in Chap. 4 about involving users in the decision-taking processes. That will win their acceptance of the specification of the asset. At the end of the project the users must be given the opportunity to agree the facility meets that specification. On a strict contractual relationship, the owner should sign completion certificates to accept the product. But when I worked in Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), the operating works signed completion certificates even when the plant was built by internal resources.
Training the Users in the Operation of the Facility. The users will usually not be experts in the operation of the facility and so will require training in its use. This should be planned as part of the project. It is probably too late if it is not addressed until close out. However, it is in the transition stage that much of the training should take place. Training will be in the use of the facility, but may also include simple maintenance procedures. Training can be a significant proportion of the cost of a project. When converting a factory to robotic manufacture IBM spent 25 percent of the budget on training.
Ensuring a Definite Cutover. The planned transition and signed completion certificates should result in a definite cutover, at which responsibility is transferred, and final payments made (Example 14.2). It can be important from a safety point of view that there is clear ownership of the facility and that transfer of responsibility is precise.
I also believe that if the new asset is replacing an old system, there must be definitive cutover from use of the old system to use of the new, and this will probably take place as ownership is transferred from the project manager to operations manager. Some people say there should be parallel running as the new system proves itself, but if there is parallel running the new system will never prove itself as the users use the system they are familiar with. The new system should be properly tested, and that may include a period of parallel running on live data while under the control of the project manager. But when transfer occurs the old system should be decommissioned, cold turkey.
Example 14.2 Signing-off completion certificates
I conducted an audit in a company which had taken 18 months to complete a contract, but they had not obtained sign-off three years later. The client was always finding fault, and had effectively had three years free maintenance. At this point, the contractor threatened to switch the equipment off (they effectively still had ownership) and very quickly agreed a final snagging list and obtained sign-off.
Recording the As-Built Design. To ensure ongoing efficient and safe operation of the new asset, it is important the as-built design is recorded. This requires the incorporation of all design changes into the final configuration. This is part of the process of configuration management (Chap. 7). This is effectively now a legal requirement in Europe under a safety directive issued by the European Union. If an accident were to occur because the users were operating a design other than the one built, it would be viewed very seriously by the authorities.
Ensuring Continuing Service or Maintenance of the Facility. The users may be able to undertake simple service or maintenance and operating manuals may help them. However, it is usually ineffective, if not impossible, for them to become experts in the technology of the asset, and so it is necessary to ensure appropriate mechanisms are in place to provide backup. This requires channels of communication and logistics support between owner and contractor throughout the life of the asset. These channels should be defined as part of the handover.
14.3 EMBEDDING THE CHANGE AND OBTAINING
BENEFIT
Many people view the project as over when the asset is handed over to the users. However, obtaining the benefit from the project is the final step in the control process. Who is responsible for this final control step depends on the circumstances: it may be the owner, a subordinate (the business change manager), or the project manager. But it should be agreed at the start as part of the project strategy. It will probably be a senior user working for the owner who is ultimately accountable if the sponsor and owner do not receive adequate return on their investment, and so the onus rests there to ensure it happens.
As we have repeatedly seen there are four steps in any control process:
Create a measure of the desired performance improvement.
Monitor achievement of that measure.
Calculate variances between the measure and achievement.
Take action to remove those variances.
Create a Measure. From the start there must be a clear definition of the project's purpose and the benefits expected from the change introduced and the operation of the new asset. The desired benefit should be defined during the start-up process (Chap. 12), refined during concept, feasibility, and design. It will be defined by the desired performance improvement (Chaps. 2 and 5). However, the desired performance improvement will not be achieved on the day the project ends and the new asset is commissioned (Chap. 2). It may take sometime for it to work through, as illustrated by the benefits map, Figure 2.6. The benefits map provides a measure not just of the ultimate benefit desired, but intermediate steps to the achievement of that, intermediate measures of performance improvement on the way to the desired end result.
Monitor Achievement. Following commissioning, the expected benefits are measured. That is not just the end benefit but the intermediate points as indicated in the benefits map. You might be expecting to take 9 to 12 months for the full benefit to work through, but it can be a risk waiting that time and finding nothing has happened. Thus the benefits map provides essential intermediate review points to measure progress towards the ultimate goal.
If the facility is a computer system, you will be checking to see whether it is delivering the expected returns. For example, if it is a manufacturing planning system, you will check to see whether the inventory is falling, the work in progress is falling, and the lead times are being reduced as predicted. If the facility is a new product, you will be checking to see whether the predicted levels of sales are being achieved. If it is a management training program, you will be checking to see if there is any noticeable improvement in management performance. (The last of these is the most difficult to measure.)
Calculate Variances. Determine the cause of any difference between the expected benefits and those obtained. The cause may be the users are not using the asset to its full capacity, either deliberately or inadvertently. The benefits map will show what should be happening; how the change should be implemented; and how the new asset will support the change. By measuring progress against the benefits map, you can ensure the change is happening as desired, that it is being fully embedded. It is unfortunately the case that people may resist the change, and implement it more in fiction than fact. The benefits map is the tool to track the embedding of the change and make sure it is truly happening.
Take Action. Hopefully a small amount of fine-tuning of the design of the new asset, or a small amount of additional training of users is all that is required to achieve the actual benefit. Projects involve considerable risk because they are novel and unique and so it is quite likely that the design carried some small imperfections which can be easily corrected. In the worst case, improvement will require another project. (That was why the problem-solving cycle, Fig. 1.6, was drawn as a circle.)
Over Secs. 14.1 through 14.3, I concentrated on work-related and strategic issues of close out. However, the team members may face the end with mixed feelings. The cycle of team formation and maintenance (Secs. 4.4 and 12.1) suggests that at the end the team may go into mourning with their performance dropping. It can rise as the team look forward to new opportunities or drop if they face unemployment. It is the task of both line and project managers to manage this emotional response so staff is retained and reintroduced into the normal work environment. When considering the motivation of project staff, it must be remembered they belong permanently to the organization and only temporarily to the project. This means that while the project may not need the staff once their contribution has finished, the organization for which they work may value the team members even more because of new skills they learned and may want them for future projects. Retaining project team members is vital and so the process of disbanding the project team must be managed in a caring way. Key elements in this process are discussed in following sections.
Planning the Rundown of Resources in Advance. This, as explained above, is important to achieve an efficient end to the project. It is also important for the motivation of the project team. People feel more motivated to complete their work if they know they are to be transferred immediately to new work. That is only possible if their release has been planned, so that their line managers have been able to plan their future work.
Returning Resources Promptly to Their Line Managers. The organization gets the optimum use of its resources if they are returned promptly to normal duties after completion of the project. Line managers of people seconded to the project are more likely to treat future requests for resources favourably if those people are used efficiently, which means releasing them at the earliest possible opportunity.
Debriefing Meeting. As well as being a learning opportunity for the organization, a project close out meeting can be as important as a launch meeting, as part of the life cycle of the project team. It marks the end of the period of working together, and allows people to show their grief, frustration, or pleasure at having been a member of the project (Example 14.3).
Example 14.3 Releasing frustration at debriefing meetings
I worked on the overhaul of ammonia plants in the early 1980s. We held a debriefing meeting after each overhaul. They served a useful purpose of allowing us to let off steam in advance of the next overhaul. For the four weeks of each overhaul, we used to suspend our feelings, to allow work to progress. We would talk to each other bluntly about what work we wanted done, what it would take, and how we felt about having been let down. It was necessary to make progress in the intensity of the overhaul. In the process, feathers got ruffled, but we had to bite our tongues and get on with it. At the debriefing meeting, it all came out; we said all the things we had bottled up for four weeks. It was all laid bare, forgiven, and we were ready to start afresh on the next overhaul.
End-of-Project Party. The use of "festivals" is an important motivator on projects. They should be used to mark important project milestones, especially the end of the project. In Germany, during the building of a house, festivals are important, especially the completion of the roof. In shipbuilding the launch is a major festival, partway through the project. I worked recently with NASA for whom festivals are very important: the launch, the landing on Mars, the gathering of first scientific data. You should do the same for your projects. Sometimes you can combine the end-of-project party with the debriefing meeting (see Example 14.4). The difficulty is choosing the timing of a party so the maximum number of people can come before being dispersed to new jobs but when they actually have something to celebrate.
Example 14.4 Combining the debriefing meeting with the end-of-project party
I did a series of three start-up workshops with a client, three in total at nine month intervals. Nine months after the last, the project manager of the second rang to say she and the project sponsor wanted to hold a close-out meeting. They wanted meeting to last three days. On the first day (Monday) they wanted to debrief the entire project leadership team, which included the sponsor, the project manager, her two lieutenants, two more people from my client organization and four contractors. Then on Tuesday they wanted to further debrief the project manager and her two lieutenants. On Wednesday they wanted a mini-start-up meeting for another project. The close-out meeting was arranged, and the manager told me it was to be held in an extremely expensive hotel. We were holding the meeting in January, so the rooms were only $300 a night, not the full summer rate of $700. We started the meeting with dinner on Sunday night. At the dinner, the project sponsor was opening champagne at $200 a bottle. Finally, I could take no more, so I asked him, "Martin, what's going on? A very expensive hotel, good dinner, and champagne at $200 a bottle?" He said the project had been budgeted to cost $18 million and ended up costing just $16 million and he couldn't give the money back. But the cost of the party was a small amount to pay to say thank you to the team in the overall scheme of things.
Rewarding Achievement. The team members are likely to react favourably to future requests to work for the project manager if their contribution is suitably appraised and rewarded. End-of-project festivals are part of that. However, it is equally important that a person's achievement is recognised by those who matter, especially the manager who is to write the individual's annual appraisal, and determine their annual bonus, so that the person's contribution to the business can be recognised. An important part of this process is winning the appraising manager's commitment to the project, so that they view a contribution to the project as an important achievement during the year. Anne Keegan, Martina Huemann, and I discuss the need to conduct project appraisals, and the link between project appraisals and appraisals in the line.2
Disciplining under Achievement. It is also important to discipline poor performance on a project so that good performers do not feel their effort was in vain and that the poor performers know how to improve in the future. For this latter reason the disciplining process should be treated positively, guiding people how to perform better in the future. Of course, it might be possible to take corrective action during the project, so the earlier this is done the better.
Career Review. The fifth stage of team development is mourning, as the project fades into history and the team with it. This is not very good for the self-esteem of the team members who find that overnight they are reduced to "has-beens" unless they go immediately to another project or line job. The end of a long project can be a useful point for all staff to have an interview with their line manager or personnel to review their current position:
It offers a chance for the individual to review career objectives.
It offers scope for skills consolidation in the form of theoretical training to supplement the practical experience.
It shows caring by the organization, which is perhaps the key factor in the whole exercise.
Recalling the case in Example 6.2, perhaps the individuals should have had such an interview well before the end of the two-year period, planning their reentry into the line organization. The individuals could then have taken responsibility for their own career development and perhaps have found opportunities for themselves within the organization where their new skills would have been of great value.
Finally, it is worthwhile to gather data about the project performance for a number of
To record the as-built design (final configuration)
To obtain a comparison of final costs and benefits for feeding back to the estimating and the selection of future projects
To record the technical achievement on the project for feeding back to the design and selection of future projects
To review the successes and failures of the project and the lessons learned for feeding back to the management of future projects
There are several ways of reviewing the success and failures of projects, two of which include debriefing meetings and postcompletion audits.
Debriefing Meetings. I have already described the role of these in disbanding the project team. It is worthwhile on most projects to hold a meeting of all people who attended the project launch workshop to review the assumptions made. This meeting may last from two hours to a day depending on the size of the project. On particularly large projects they may amalgamate up from a low level, reversing the cascade of project launch workshops.
Postcompletion Audits. On large projects, it may also be worthwhile to conduct a post-completion audit. This is a formal review of the project against a checklist. An audit is often conducted by external consultants. It is also common only to audit projects which have gone radically wrong. However, better lessons are often learned from successes, so it can be useful to audit projects which have gone well. I describe the holding of audits more fully in Chap. 18.
1. The key requirements for effective project close out are
Finishing the work in a timely and efficient manner
Transferring the product to the users
Obtaining the benefits
Disbanding the team
Reviewing progress
2. The work must be finished in a timely, efficient manner. The following can aid this:
Checklists of outstanding work
Planning and controlling at lower levels of work breakdown
More frequent control meetings
Planned rundown of the project team
Use of task forces
Changing the project manager
Closing contracts with suppliers
3. Effective transfer of the product to the users is facilitated by:
Planning the transition
Ensuring user acceptance
Training the users
Obtaining definite cutover
Recording the as-built design
Ensuring maintenance of the facility
4. The facility must be commissioned to obtain the required benefit, and this can be controlled by:
Defining the desired benefit and desired performance improvement and by drawing a benefits map
Monitoring performance improvement and tracking progress against the benefits map
Identifying shortfalls
Taking action to overcome the shortfalls
5. The project team must be disbanded in an efficient manner, and yet in a way that takes care of their motivational needs. This can be achieved by:
Planning the rundown
Returning resources promptly to line managers
Holding a debriefing meeting
Holding an end-of-project party
Rewarding achievement
Disciplining under achievement
Counselling staff
6. Postcompletion reviews must be held to:
Record the as-built design
Compare achievement to plan
Record technical data
Learn successes and failures for the future
1. Frame, J.D., Managing Projects in Organizations, 3d ed., San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003.
2. Turner, J.R., Huemann, M., and Keegan, A.E., Human Resource Management in the Project-Oriented Organization, Newtown Square, PA.: Project Management Institute, 2008.