Question: Please so an analysis of this work:-
- Explain at least two potential issues that may arise when a project closure is not performed, including how you might resolve these issues. Be specific and use examples from your own personal experience to support your post.
- Explain two ways a post-implementation review can enable a project manager to improve future projects.
- Read your colleague's postings and compare the similarities and differences between them.
- Respond to your colleagues' explanations by expanding on, questioning, or offering further support for their ideas, or by suggesting new or alternative viewpoints.
ANSWER: Project Completion and Review
- The cost for the Quebec Olympic Stadium in 1972 was forecasted at 178 million dollars and completed by July 17, 1976, in time for the Olympic Games (Girard, 2010). The roof was not completed in time and the total cost for the stadium was 1.5 billion dollars (Girard 2010). This was 8.43 times more expensive that the initial forecast. Moreover, it took 12 years to complete, which was three times longer than originally planned for the project. What is of interest, is that this followed other project failures such as the Laval Metro and the revitalization of the Gaspésia, a pulp and paper mill in the Gaspé. Governments, nations, and corporations alike, must learn from both success and failure in projects if the real long-term value and resource investment is to be returned and realised.
- Project Closure is the last phases in the project cycle and formally closes the project with a report, usually provided to the sponsor, (projectmanagement.com 2009), addressing the successes and challenges that the project manager and team have experienced. Project
- Closure as a phase is also responsible for passing over all deliverables to the relevant parties, cancelling any project specific contracts and relationships as well as redistributing resources such as staff back to their respective departments. In my experience, I like to get back to where we all were pre-project, but with the scope and deliverables in place. Failure to perform a project closure report and take care of these areas can lead to many issues. For me, the most important part of the closing process and report is the lessons learned analysis. As we looked at in the Quebec cases, here we saw several government funded projects that failed to learn from previous mistakes. As much as the project manager is agent of change for the project, I believe they must be prolific in developing the learning, reflection, and change culture companywide. This is well discussed by Crawford and Nahmias (2010), it is identified that change managers must be able to change behaviours and culture to achieve long term goals. Project Closure is also concerned with the final reconciliation of budgets. This is important as it gives a numbers based picture of how successful the project was.
- ‘A Post-Implementation Review (PIR) is an assessment and review of the completed working solution. It will be performed after a period of live running, sometime after the project is completed`, Wallace (2007).Moreover, Wallace (2007), deduces three key purposes for the PIR:
- To ascertain the degree of success from the project, in particular, the extent to which it met its objectives, delivered planned levels of benefit, and addressed the specific requirements as originally defined.
- To examine the efficacy of all elements of the working business solution to see if further improvements can be made to optimise the benefit delivered.
- To learn lessons from this project, lessons which can be used by the team members and by the organisation to improve future project work and solutions.
- Overall, the PIR enables the project manager to make a comprehensive analysis of what went well, and therefore make sure this is well used in other projects, and what challenges were faced. As leaders, it is important that we have strong ability to reflect as this enables us to be transformational (Burns, 1980), in our approach to coach and inspire others.