Subtitles of the Movie

In this movie, we'll talk about closing documentation, which is part of Administrative Closure. There's a lot of paperwork involved in closing out a project and for reasons that we've covered in this section already but let's go through closing documentation in further detail since there's a few terms I'd like to cover. You'll see that closing documentation is meant to be a final review of performance for the project and for the team members that participated. There are four items I'd like to specifically review: the Closing Report, a Post-Mortem Analysis, Performance Appraisals and documenting Lessons Learned. The first item I'd like to address are the closing reports. Every project should have a Closing Report that is generated and then archived for future reference. The Closing Report summarizes the project, its objectives including historical data such as the performance of the project and a summary of the cost and schedule. In essence, it's an assessment of the project and is considered the last status report generated for the project. If the project is rejected this report must provide a detailed reason why. Next, let's look at a Post-Mortem Analysis. A Post-Mortem Analysis occurs when projects are closed early. It documents the reasons for early closure and the impact that the early closure has on the organization. If any of the work was done and deliverables were approved and accepted, the Post-Mortem Analysis also looks at whether any of the work can be salvaged and transferred to other projects. You might recall that I briefly mentioned Performance Appraisals earlier in this section where we talked about releasing resources. A final individual Performance Appraisal should be conducted for all of the resources. This is typically carried out by the functional manager with feedback from the project manager. However, that depends on the type of organizational structure that the project is functioning in so it tends to vary. The Performance Appraisal should be reviewed with the team members, just as a standard company evaluation is and then the appraisal should be archived within the employee's records. The final item I'd like to cover is the documentation of Lessons Learned, which is something that's documented as part of the post-project review meeting. CompTIA defines lessons learned as the learning that takes place during the project and that is documented to provide information on what went well and what can be improved. Lessons Learned is something that we've been gathering throughout the project as the project progressed, but at the end of the project it's documented to a greater extent. The reason that it's so important at this point is that we can look at and document the strengths and the weaknesses of the entire project from beginning to end. All the pieces of the puzzle are in place and we can analyze them with the help of the project team. On that note, I'd like to make a point on how important the participation of the project team is. Their feedback and input is what makes the end of project Lessons Learned session so valuable. You'll want to hold this as soon as possible during the closing stage when the key team players have not moved on to other projects because at that point, much of the information will be forgotten. The best Lessons Learned are gathered while the information is still fresh. Here are some questions that you'll want to consider along with the help of the team. You'll want to ask things like, what went well within the project? What didn't go so well? Any particular strengths that the project exhibited? And how about any weaknesses? Along those lines you should also ask whether there's anything that can be improved in general of how the project was managed and carried out. Is there any place where we can be more efficient? In speaking with several project managers about Lessons Learned and in working with the team in gathering Lessons Learned firsthand, I often get two types of push backs. The first is that it takes too much time and time is something that we don't have. That often happens when a PMO doesn't exist and the value of Lessons Learned isn't understood. When you get this type of response communicate with the team the benefits. For instance, Lessons Learned helps us manage projects to a greater level of efficiency and success. They help us avoid making the same mistakes over again and to build on our strengths what we do well. Although it's truly not that time consuming, for some it may seem like it but the time that it saves and the number of issues that it reduces later down the line is extraordinary. The second push back is that management wants to focus only on the positive, not the negative meaning let's identify what we did well and not linger on the bad stuff. While this may make us feel great during the review meeting, it's not as productive. You've only done half the work. We'll certainly want to point out the project's strengths and positives, but ignoring the weaknesses and the process of identifying areas of improvement devalues Lessons Learned. It's important to also evaluate weaknesses and the areas needed for improvement so that we can have more positive results as we continue. Every project will have some areas that could have been improved because the world is constantly evolving, so processes, procedures and guidelines must continue to adapt to the changes occurring within the industries. And that wraps up this movie on closing documentation, an important element of Closure. That also wraps up this section on Project Closing.