Importance of Project Closeout and Capturing Lessons Learned

Running head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT 1
Project Management
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

PROJECT MANAGEMENT 2
Table of Contents
Part 1.....................................................................................................................................................3
What are some of the reasons why it is important to close out a project?..............................................3
Why should projects capture lessons learned?.......................................................................................3
Part 2.....................................................................................................................................................4
Summary of the Project Undertaken......................................................................................................4
Problems Encountered in the Project.....................................................................................................4
Site accidents.....................................................................................................................................5
Environmental effects........................................................................................................................5
Defective design................................................................................................................................5
Shortage of labour.............................................................................................................................6
Materials and equipment failure........................................................................................................6
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Team.................................................................................................6
Strengths............................................................................................................................................6
Weaknesses.......................................................................................................................................6
Allocation of Tasks and Quality of Communication..............................................................................7
Lessons learnt........................................................................................................................................7
Conclusions...........................................................................................................................................7

PROJECT MANAGEMENT 3
Part 1
What are some of the reasons why it is important to close out a project?
Project close out is the last phase of the project that indicates the formal accomplishment
of the work. It is a critical moment of the project life cycle, which is more of making a final
presentation to the client (Kerzner, 2018). In this sense, project close out is an important part
of the project in the following ways:
 Confirmation of whether the objectives have been attained: At the end of each
activity, it is relevant to check if all the outlined practices have been carried out as
planned, since the client hires a project team so as to help them realize certain
organisational objectives. The process of project closure allows one to obtain user
acceptance testing sign-off from the client (Meredith, Mantel Jr, & Shafer, 2017).
This implies that the project team has realized the project objectives are agreed upon
signing of the contract. Confirmation of objectives is a formal customer sign-off,
which has to be provided by the customer as a confirmation about the delivered
deliverables that marks the completion of the project.
 Documentation and validation. This closeout practice is done to ensure that all project
activities shortlisted n the work breakdown structure have been accomplished.
 Reviewing the business case study as well as the project charter to make sure that all
documentations regarding the requirements has been completed.
 It provides guidelines about the scope as well as responsibility for completion of the
project, maintenance and additional services that warranty liability for maintenance of
the work to be undertaken in future and any expansion required toward the project.
Why should projects capture lessons learned?
There is need to capture lesson learned because documenting these lessons describes
factors that led to the project going wrong and factors that led to the project moving in the
right direction throughout the project lifecycle (Duffield & Whitty, 2015). Although each
project face distinct set of challenges, but individual challenges repeat themselves. Therefore,
documenting the causes of variances helps to think about corrective measures to avert similar
challenges in future.