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Terminating the Project
The fourth and final phase of the project life cycle is terminating the project. It starts after the project work has been completed and includes various actions to properly close out the project.
The purpose of properly terminating a project is to learn from the experience gained on the project in order to improve performance on future projects. Therefore, the activities associated with terminating the project should be identified and included in the project’s baseline plan—they should not be done merely as spontaneous afterthoughts. These activities might include organizing and filing project documents, receiving and making final payments, and conducting post-project evaluation meetings within both the contractor’s and the customer’s organization.
The termination phase starts when performance of the project is completed and the result is accepted by the customer. In some situations, this might be a somewhat formal event in which an automated system satisfies a set of criteria or passes tests that were stated in the contract. Other projects, such as a weekend of homecoming activities at a university, are completed merely with the passage of time.
CHAPTER 3Project Management Concepts and Process
A project is an endeavor to accomplish a specific objective through effectively utilizing resources in order to complete a unique set of interrelated tasks. The following attributes help define a project:
►A project has a well-defined objective—an expected result or product. The objective of a project is usually defined in terms of scope, schedule, and cost. For example, the objective of a project might be to introduce to the market— in 10 months and within a budget of $400,000—a new food preparation appliance that meets certain predefined performance specifications. The project team must complete a scope statement for developing a common understanding of the project scope among stakeholders. This lists project deliverables – summary level sub-products, whose full and satisfactory delivery marks the completion of the project. Furthermore, it is expected that the work scope will be accomplished in a quality manner and to the customer’s satisfaction.
►A project is carried out through a series of interdependent tasks—that is, a number of nonrepetitive tasks that need to be accomplished in a certain sequence in order to achieve the project objective.
►A project utilizes various resources to carry out the tasks. Such resources can include different people, organizations, equipment, materials, and facilities. For example, a wedding is a project that may involve resources such as a caterer, a florist, a limousine, and a reception hall.
► A project has a specific time frame, or finite life span. It has a start time and a date by which the objective must be accomplished. For example, the refurbishing of an elementary school might have to be completed between June 20 and August 20.
►A project may be a unique occurrence or one-time endeavor. Some projects— like designing and building a space station on Mars—are unique because they have never before been attempted. Other projects, such as developing a new product, building a house, or planning a wedding, are unique because of the customization required. For example, a wedding can be a simple informal occasion, with a few friends in a chapel, or a spectacular event staged for a royal family.
►A project has a stakeholder. The stakeholder (or customer) is the entity that provides the funds necessary to accomplish the project—it can be a person, an organization, or a group of two or more people or organizations. When a contractor builds a customized home for a couple, the couple is the stakeholder funding the project. When a company receives funds from the government to develop a robotic device for handling radioactive material, the stakeholder is the government agency. When a company provides funds for a team of its employees to upgrade the firm’s management information system, the term stakeholder takes on a broader definition, including not only the project funder (the company’s management) but also other stakeholders, such as the people who will be the end users of the information system. The person managing the project and the project team must successfully accomplish the project objective to satisfy the stakeholder(s).
►Finally, a project involves a degree of uncertainty. Before a project is started, a plan is prepared based on certain assumptions and estimates. It is important to document these assumptions, since they will influence the development of the project budget, schedule, and work scope. A project is based on a unique set of tasks and estimates of how long each task should take, various resources and assumptions about the availability and capability of those resources, and estimates of the costs associated with the resources. This combination of assumptions and estimates causes a degree of uncertainty as to whether the project objective can or will be completely accomplished by deadline. For example, the project scope may be accomplished by the target date, but the final cost may be much higher than anticipated because of low initial estimates for the cost of certain resources. As the project proceeds, some of the assumptions will be refined or replaced with factual information. For example, once the conceptual design of a company’s annual report is finalized, the amount of time and effort needed to complete the detailed design and printing can be better estimated.
The successful accomplishment of the project objective is usually constrained by four factors: scope, cost, schedule, and customer satisfaction.
The scope of a project—also known as the project scope, or work scope—is all the work that must be done in order to ensure that the customer is completely satisfied and that the deliverables (the tangible product or items to be provided) meet the requirements or acceptance criteria agreed upon at the onset of the project. For example, a project scope might include all of the work involved in clearing the land, building a house, and landscaping to the specifications agreed upon by the contractor and the buyer. The customer expects the work scope to be accomplished in a quality manner. For example, in a house-building project, the customer expects the workmanship to be of the highest quality. Completing the work scope but leaving windows that are difficult to open and close, faucets that leak, or a landscape full of rocks will result in an unsatisfied customer.
The cost of a project is the amount the customer has agreed to pay for acceptable project deliverables. The project cost is based on a budget that is determined by cost estimates of all necessary resources for completing the project. It might include the salaries of people who will work on the project, materials and supplies, equipment or facility rentals, and the fees of subcontractors or consultants who will perform some of the project tasks. For example, if the project is a wedding, some of the budgeted items might include flowers, wedding gown, tuxedo, caterer, cake, limousine rental, photographer, and so on.
The schedule for a project is the timetable that specifies when each activity should start and finish. The project objective usually states the time by which the project scope must be completed, which is typically a specific date agreed upon by the customer and the individual or organization performing the work. It might be the date when a town’s centennial celebration will take place or the date by which you want to complete the addition of a family room to your home.
The objective of any project is to complete the scope within budget, by a certain date, and to the customer’s satisfaction. To help assure the achievement of this objective, it is important