Administrative Closure

This is a topic that is left out of the PMBOK 3^rd edition section on project communications management, but it is a very useful concept for a practicing project manager. Whether a project comes to an end because of reaching the originally established deliverables or because it is stopped in the middle, every project requires closure. Formal acceptance of the product of the project by the sponsor or customer is done during Administrative Closure when the output of the project is documented. Logging and retention of all project records, adherence to specifications, analysis of project success and/or failure, and saving lessons learned are all parts of the Administrative Closure process. When the project is finished, this type of information is archived for use either in reviewing the project or as guidelines for new projects.

Ideally, you should have Administrative Closure for each phase of the project if possible. (This is much like lessons learned.) The longer you wait to do Administrative Closure, the more likely it is that usable information will be lost.

Q.	________ acceptance of the product of the project is done during Administrative Closure.
		A.	Formal
		B.	Written
		C.	Oral
		D.	Electronic

The answer is A. The sponsor or customer should formally accept the final product of the project at this time.

Q.	You should do Administrative Closure at the end of each ________ of the project.
		A.	Deliverable
		B.	Month
		C.	Phase
		D.	Week

The answer is C. Waiting until the end of the project to do Administrative Closure may result in loss of important information. The end of each phase is a natural time for gathering and archiving documentation.

The inputs to Administrative Closure are performance measurement documentation, product documentation, and other project records (PMBOK). When doing Administrative Closure, all documentation pertaining to the execution of the project by the project team should be made available. This should include not only performance reports but also the original plans against which performance is measured.

Product documentation such as specifications, drawings, blueprints, technical documentation, and other varieties of documentation should also be available for Administrative Closure as well as any other project records that will help make Administrative Closure go efficiently.

The tools and techniques found in Administrative Closure have all been discussed elsewhere in this chapter.

Finally, the outputs from Administrative Closure are project archives, project closure, and lessons learned. The project archives should be indexed. This makes it easier to go through the project records and find specific topic areas. Putting all the project files in a cabinet without an index can result in more time being spent on simply finding the documentation to be reviewed than in actually reviewing the documents. Each project archive should be prepared for archiving by the appropriate party on the project team. After receiving the archives from the appropriate people, make sure that databases containing materials that are being archived are updated.

PMBOK points out that when projects are done under contract as opposed to in-house, it is extremely important to focus on financial records. Years after the project has been finished, it is still possible that various people will want to look through data such as cost. The specific data that are often the most important years later are costs and their control during the project.

Q.	Project archives need to be ________ to be most useful.
		A.	Written
		B.	Oral
		C.	Controlled
		D.	Indexed

The answer is D. In order to search for materials after Administrative Closure has occurred and the project is finished, indexing archives helps make searching for information much faster and simpler.

Project closure as an output of Administrative Closure means that the customer or sponsor of the project has accepted the final output of the project. The requirements for the project, the deliverables for the project, and the results of doing the project are all used to get customer acceptance. This acceptance should be formal and written. It is not sufficient to simply get verbal acceptance when doing project closure.

Lessons learned have been discussed several times elsewhere in the book. The key part is that when Administrative Closure is done, there should be some type of lessons learned database that future project managers can search for information on how the project was run. Lessons learned are one of the most valuable of all the pieces of information available after a project is finished. Often they are not done, but to be of help to other project managers, you should work hard to see that lessons learned are done during Administrative Closure.

Q.	Acceptance of the output of the project by the sponsor or customer should be ________.
		A.	Early
		B.	Oral
		C.	Formal
		D.	Indexed

The answer is C. It is extremely important to have formal acceptance when the project is being brought to Administrative Closure. If the acceptance is formal, you will have a record of it. You can refer to this record at any later time, and it forestalls any arguments about whether the project was done correctly.