Closing a Project

• Purpose
• Objective
• Context
• Activities
  • Overview
  • Prepare planned closure
  • Prepare premature closure
  • Hand over products
  • Evaluate the project
  • Recommend project closure

Key sections

• Introduction
• Business case
• Organization
• Quality
• Plans
• Risk
• Change
• Progress
• Introduction to processes
• Starting up a projectDirecting a project
• Initiating a project
• Controlling a stage
• Managing Product Delivery
• Managing a Stage Boundary
• Closing a Project
• Tailoring PRINCE2 to the project environment
• Directing Projects with PRINCE2

Activities

Hand over products

The project’s products must be passed to an operational and maintenance environment prior to the project being closed.
This may happen as a single release at the end of the project, or the project approach may include phased delivery where products are handed over in a number of releases.

In the case of a premature closure, there may be some products that have been approved but not yet handed over and, depending on the Project Board guidance, the ownership of some or all of those products may need to be transferred to the customer.

When handing over products, the Benefits Review Plan may need to be updated to include the post-project benefits review(s) of the performance of the project’s products in operational use.
Such benefits reviews may identify whether there have been any side-effects (beneficial or adverse) that could provide useful lessons for other projects.

It is not a project activity to undertake benefits reviews post-project, only to plan for such benefits reviews to occur.
If the project is part of a programme, then the post-project benefits reviews need to be covered by the programme’s benefits management activities.

Diagram 1 shows the inputs to, and outputs from, this activity.

© Crown copyright 2005 Reproduced under licence from OGC

Diagram 1

PRINCE2® recommends the following actions:

• In consultation with the project management team, prepare follow-on action recommendations for the project’s products to include any uncompleted work, issues and risks. There could be separate follow-on action recommendations for each product or distinct user group (for example, human resources, finance, operations)
• Check that the Benefits Review Plan includes post-project activities to confirm benefits that cannot be measured until after the project’s products have been in operational use for some time (for example, reliability requirements)
• The Configuration Management Strategy should be examined in order to confirm how products are to be handed over to those who will maintain them in their operational life:
• Confirm that the correct operational and maintenance environment is in place
• Consider the early life-support requirements of each product being handed over because the early life of a product is often the period of peak demand on the support organization
• Where a product requires a lot of potentially expensive support and maintenance, the Project Manager should ensure that a suitable service agreement or contract has been drawn up between the operations and maintenance organizations and the end-users. In such instances, the service agreement should be included as a product to be delivered as part of the plan
• Confirm acceptance from the operations and maintenance organizations
• Request and obtain acceptance records
• Transfer the responsibility for the products from the project to the operations and maintenance organizations and update the products’ Configuration Item Records

Diagram 2 shows the responsibilities for this activity.

© Crown copyright 2005 Reproduced under licence from OGC

Diagram 2

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