project management success series: part six

Pinnacle Business Systems www.pbsnow.com

Brandy shares her 15 years of experience in project management and has created a six-part series highlighting key elements to a projects success, specifically in the IT management industry.

Brandy Semore, Pinnacle’s Operations Manager

Follow these actionable steps and advice to help you improve the outcome of projects you lead or participate in at your organization.


Project Management Success: Part Six

SEVEN STEPS TO A PROJECT CLOSEOUT

If you have been following along in our Project Management Series, we are now at the point of closing the project together.

Without the end – it’s not a project, so lets walk through the 7 steps to closing out a project.


STEP ONE: ASSESS THE PROJECT

Assess the project – As a project manager, you should confirm that everything is completed by reviewing the project plan and ensuring that every task has been marked as completed.

During this step, you should review with the resources who were assigned tasks because they are the ones to assist in confirming all work has been completed.


Ensure completion— Confirm the project has met all sponsor, customer, and stakeholder requirements.

At this point you should also verify that all deliverables have been distributed and accepted by the project sponsor and the assigned team.


STEP TWO: ENSURE COMPLETION


STEP THREE: SOLICIT FEEDBACK

Solicit feedback- We ask our clients four simple yes/no questions at the end of every project:

• I agree that the contract deliverables meet the business and technical requirements set forth in the Statement of Work.

• I agree that the contract deliverables have been completed.

• I would feel comfortable using Pinnacle’s Professional Services in the future.

• I agree that any additional requests for changes will be treated as an additional scope of work with additional costs.

Handover – This involves formal communication to everyone regarding the closure of the project.

We address who will manage the handover, who will support it, support costs, etc. A project's completion requires an orderly handover.


STEP FOUR: HANDOVER


STEP FIVE: LESSONS LEARNED

Lessons learned – Simply put, you need to obtain, record, and document all of the lessons learned from your project and share and discuss them with your team.

Doing so helps prevent the same mistakes being made on the next project, which will save you time and money.


STEP SIX: RECOGNITION

Recognition – It’s always a good idea to recognize and celebrate outstanding project work.

A Globoforce research study in 2013 showed that 89 percent of people are more motivated by being told what they are doing right than by being told what they are doing wrong, and nearly 80 percent looked for this recognition to be given close to the time of the activity.

http://www.globoforce.com/news/press-releases/globoforce-survey-shows-american-workers-seek-reinvention-of-reviews/


STEP SEVEN: FINANCIALS

Financials – A savvy project manager never skips this step. You should review what the estimated time and costs were compared to how much time and money was actually spent.

Only by doing this are you able to improve and prevent future project timelines and budgets from going over.


THE END OF THE ROAD

We’ve reached the end of the road in this blog series.

Thanks for reading! Please email me if you have any questions on this 6-part series, on project management in general, or anything else you think Pinnacle may be able to assist you with.

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.pbsnow.com/contact/

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Have questions for Brandy? Email her at [email protected]


project management success series: part six

Technology