From the course: Project Management Foundations

Learn how to close and transition projects

From the course: Project Management Foundations

Learn how to close and transition projects

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- [Narrator] At the very end of a project there are a few pesky but important details to tie up. First, close any contracts you signed. If your project included a contract with the customer, the signed acceptance form means the customer agrees that the contract is complete. Depending on the contract's terms, you might have other things to do like support the project's deliverables or perform a follow up in a few months. Once the scheduling system is in operation, you'll run reports to see whether hospital performance objectives have been met. With vendor contracts, confirm that they did what they're supposed to do. Then close those contracts as well. What if another group picks up where your project team leaves off? Make sure that the ongoing group is ready to take over when the project becomes part of day to day operations. For example, the hospital IT department takes over maintenance of the scheduling system, and the schedulers start using the system in their daily work. As project manager, help your team transition to their next assignments. The best approach is to give functional managers advanced notice that their people will be available. Then the managers can find new assignments and plan the transitions. Archive all your project information. Archiving information electronically makes it easy to find and share. Depending on the technology that's available in your company, you might keep your project files on a network drive, in a database, or a document management system. Finally, close the accounts you use to bill the project costs. For most projects, you keep the financial books open for a few months after the project is complete. That way you can process follow-on expenses, like support. To prevent erroneous charges, close all the accounting codes except for the ones related to the follow up activities. With these tasks taken care of, your project is truly complete and your assignment as project manager is over. Take a moment or two to celebrate what you've accomplished. Okay, now you're ready for your next project.

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