Closeout processes and challenges
Project closeout phase is described as the final stage of the project lifecycle, which is undertaken at the end of the system integration project. This final phase begin when the consumer or the user of the project accepts its deliverables and the oversight authority have certified that the project met all the established goals (Litsikakis, 2006). Project closeout key processes include the following:
- The resolution of all the key problems that affects the projects.
- Verification of the state of all artifacts known through a process of configuration audit.
Read also Roles of Senior/ Executive Management During Project Life Cycle
- Ensuring that the state of all needed artifacts reached the stakeholders.
- Making sure that within the project life cycle, any deployment such as training, transition and installation is effected and any pending issues should be addressed and fixed prior to delivering to the client.
- All the expenses and financial allocation should be paid off before the contract of the project ends.
Challenges
There are several challenges that are normally encountered during system integration project closeout phase. Some of these challenges include:
- Normally, during project final phase, the companies face challenges of minimizing the wastage of resources such as finances, time and workforce.
- The other challenge is the lack of adequate resource and lack of interest to push more by the employees towards the end of project completion.
- Another challenge is the ability of the company to effectively manage and coordinate all the activities is all the departments until the completion of the project.
Read also Innovative Approaches to Creating System Development Life Cycles (SDLC)
Major objectives of the closeout phase
The key objectives of the project closeout are:
- Ensures that complete project is delivered to the users or consumers.
- Enhances customers or users’ satisfaction level on the delivered project.
- Make sure that the quality and correctness of the project requirements has been met.
- Future business impacts has been identified.
- All the financial accounts are closed up at the end of the project.
- Make sure that the successes of the project is documented.
- Document all the lessons learned throughout the project lifecycle.
Read also Concept of Resource Scheduling and Methods Used to Schedule Resources in Project Management
Project closeout phase is very important since it is the final stage of the project life-cycle and most of the companies tend to ignore this phase. It is important in the sense that it ensures that all the contractual details and requirements have been met before the project is delivered to the consumers or users (Archibald, et al., 2015). The project closeout stage also ensures that reliability, users’ or consumer’s satisfaction, completion level and project correctness is enhanced. These phase also determines the future endeavors and success of the business.
Five major challenges encountered in the planning project closeout phase
There are several minor and major challenges involved in the planning closeout phase of the project life cycle. The five major challenges are:
- Completion: One of the major challenge encountered by the management or project manager is to make sure that the project is 100 % completed. The challenges arises when the project manager or supervisors ignore to deliver a complete project as per contractual agreement.
- Documentation: It is important to document every step throughout the project lifecycle from the initial stage to the last stage. This allows for future assessment and rectification of any stage that needs to be improved. However, most organization lack detail documentation of everything that took place, hence making it difficult to trace the origin of the problem.
- Project system closure: Most companies lack the required infrastructure and resource such as competent personal to ensure that project systems are closed properly during the closeout phase. These include closing financial system by payout all the suppliers and terminating deliveries on time.
- Project Review: Generally, after every phase a project review needs to be conducted in order to identify shortcomings and ascertain the progress of the project. Project review also assists the personnel to document each phase at a time.
- Dismantling the project team: After working together and ensuring that the project is accomplished, it is challenge for the manager to assemble all the team members and inform them their work is over and they have to return to their specific departments.
- Stakeholder satisfaction: It is often difficult to assess whether the stakeholders are satisfied with the final outcome of the project.
Major closeout tasks
There are various major tasks that needs to be undertaken during system integration project proposal. These include the distribution of the resources such as automated system, staff members, facilities, equipment and allocation of the finance (Litsikakis, 2009). The closing out of financial issues such as contract closure and labor charges. Gathering, recording and documenting project records. The other important task that needs to be undertaken is to evaluate the lesson learned throughout the project lifecycle. Lastly, the project manager must acknowledge the contribution of all the people that were involved in the process.
Get Your Custom Paper From Professional Writers. 100% Plagiarism Free, No AI Generated Content and Good Grade Guarantee. We Have Experts In All Subjects.
Place Your Order Now