System Integration Closeout

Once project objectives have been met or its resources released or reassigned, termination becomes necessary. At the closure phase, all the stakeholders must be satisfied with the project milestones. Clients must be satisfied with the project output and impact, at the same time; the project managers must be satisfied with the outcome. Project closeout commence with Post-Implementation Review (Nicholas & Steyn, 2012). Usually, a survey is conducted to generated information from stakeholders. The feedback collected is used come up with the best practice and a source of learning. The information stored in a centralized system with backups to facilitate ease of information access and for security respectively.

All system integration closeouts end with administrative closing stage. The administrators provide the team members with the project feedback, update of skills, analysis main project measurements and documentation of project equipment. At this stage, the implementers assess their own performance based on the feedback from their team cases (Westland, 2006).

System Intergradation Closeout Processes

Collection of Contract Documents

The contract manager announces project closeout once the project objectives have been met. The entire relevant documents are collected and reviewed. The documents should include the initial/original contract document that outlines project schedules, adjustments and evaluation reports (Nicholas & Steyn, 2012).

Contractor Final Review

A full completion review of the contract is vital to determine whether all the demands in the original contract are met. The contract manager review all the requirements, deliverables, and objectives against the original contract documents. Each product stage must be reviewed and approved.

Formal Acceptance

On behalf of the project sponsors, the project manager drafts a formal acceptance letter after contractual obligations have been satisfied. The letter acts as a notice to the contracted organization, informing the organization that the contract has formally come to its end. Reference of the letter is taken from the initial contract document.

Administrative Closure

Administrative closure involves preparation of closure documents. The project manager analyses the deliverables and ensure redistribution of project and its resources.

Financial Closure

Financial closure is subjected to financial analysts. The financial analysis audits all the financial undertakings during the process and approves them. All budgets are halted and all financial transactions suspended. Financial closures involve closure of project account and the entire contract. Financial audit involve analysis of the budgets, financial statements and receipts (Nicholas & Steyn, 2012).

Archiving

The project manager ensures all the project documents are properly stored. The document should be stored in both soft and hard copies. The archived documents should give details such as project description, organization charts, budgets and costs, project schedules and adjustments following evaluations.

Human Resource and Facilities

The entire workforce that has been involved in the project is reassigned. Usually, workers are sent to new projects. Equipment is transported from the project area to storage or new projects. The facilities are cleaned and locked as a formal handover procedure.

The Project Closeout Review and lessons learned

The project managers expose his team to lessons learned during the project. This is valuable for the development of the team. The project team at the same time is able to share their experiences and outline personal challenges that they encountered during the project. Recommendations for handling future projects are set at this stage (Nicholas & Steyn, 2012).

Celebration of Project Success

Recognition of employees’ contribution during the project is necessary. A project success should be accomplished with celebration, which will involve certificate and price giving ceremony.

Completing PIER

The project manager and his/her team, completes the PIER document. The document describes the result of the project (usually adopted in IT). It document the project dates, cost involved, objectives and goals, lesson learned and recommendations.

The chart below demonstrates the major system integration closeout tasks.

Objectives of System Intergradation Closeout

Many organizations fall into a trap of failing to effectively close their projects. As such, the importance of project closure needs to be overemphasized. It is a common practice that project managers neglect the closure phase, especially when the project is undertaken in multi-project environment (Nicholas & Steyn, 2008). Project managers usually rush into completing project within the set deadlines without setting time to learn and reflect upon their project. Usually, many implementers subsequently fail in their project due to inability to evaluate their past undertakings.

Project Closeout evaluates the success or fails of a given project. Project closeout report is a summary of activities of the entire project. It identifies the variances from the initial project contract. To the project managers, the phase identifies areas that needs improvement, which is valuable for future projects development (Nicholas & Steyn, 2008).

The following are the major contribution of system integration closeout cases (Westland, 2006).

The implementers are provided the opportunity to evaluate their performance against the original project documents. Deviations and poor performance can be identified and their sources traced. This is important for future system integration.
Closeout phase provide implementers with baseline while, at the same time, help the team set their implementation standards. This is important for continuous development and improvement of future system integrations.
Through lesson-learned activities, industrial Best Practices are established for future project. Lesson learned activities are vital for both the growth of employees and the health of project implementation organizations.
The closure phase ensures smooth transition of the project between the implementers and the owners. At the same time, it creates satisfaction among the clients and sponsors through documents such as checklist.
Proper closeout phase help the implementers determine loses such as damages on equipment, breakages and loses.
Closeout face ensures project implementers remain abreast with current system integration trends.

Challenges of System Integration Closeout

Many project managers neglect system integration closeout since measurement of success is difficult. Projects are never replicate and the important of activities such as lesson learned in one project might never be useful in the next project. As a result, the best practices can never be followed strictly, since they might mislead implementers in future projects cases (Westland, 2006).

Soliciting feedback is not always easy. Project stakeholder might be people in different geographical location; as a result, collecting their view in time proves difficult. Personal judgment, as well, can affect feedbacks. One individual can rate a project as a success while other considers the project performances as a failure. System integration closeout is conducted at the end of the entire project; a lot of information is as stakeholders forget while others are carried with immediate occurrences. Team members cannot effectively recall their experiences during the whole process and closure recommendations are mainly based on extreme cases (Westland, 2006).

Project closure is a strenuous exercise. Analyzing documents since the commencement of the system to evaluate the performance often involve a lot of work and time. Project managers are time conscious and are never willing to spend extra months while the projects have ended. The main challenge is most project stakeholders never identify system integration closeout as necessary stage during initial project documentation. In most cases, the closeout phase is simply conducted by exchange of the documents between the project managers and the owners (Nicholas & Steyn, 2008). Rarely are stakeholders interested in reading many chapters of project reports, accordingly, project managers do not see the essence of sweating on reports, which will never be productive.

References

Nicholas, J. M., & Steyn, H. (2008). Project management for business, engineering, and technology: principles and practice (3rd ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann.

Nicholas, J. M., & Steyn, H. (2012). Project management for engineering, business and technology (4th ed.). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Westland, J. (2006). The project management life cycle a complete step-by-step methodology for initiating, planning, executing & closing a project successfully. London: Kogan Page.