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

Prepare premature closure

In some situations, the Project Board may have instructed the Project Manager to close the project prematurely.
In such circumstances, the Project Manager must ensure that work in progress is not simply abandoned, but that the project salvages anything of value created to date and checks that any gaps left by the cancellation of the project are raised to corporate or programme management.

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:

• Update the Issue Register (and, if necessary, the Issue Report) to record the premature closure request
• Update the Project Plan with actuals from the final stage
• Request a Product Status Account from Project Support. From this, determine which of the project’s products:
• Have been approved by the authorities identified in their Product Descriptions
• Are currently in development (and which of those need to be completed)
• Are covered by approved concessions
• Have yet to be started
• Need to be made safe
• May be useful to other projects
• Agree the means for recovering products that have been completed or are in progress (if appropriate). This will need Project Board consultation and may include additional work to create, make safe or complete products that might be useful to other projects (for example, making a part-built building safe and weatherproof). In some cases, the additional work may require an Exception Plan
• Seek approval to give notice to corporate or programme management that resources can be (or are about to be) released early

Diagram 2 shows the responsibilities for this activity.

© Crown copyright 2005 Reproduced under licence from OGC

Diagram 2

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