13 Project Closure and Audits
Experts often possess more data than judgment.
—Colin Powell, Secretary of State (Harari 2003)
Objectives
After reading this lesson, you will be able to
- Discuss the importance of getting the fundamentals right and keeping them right throughout a project
- Explain the value of project reviews and audits
- Describe issues related to correcting course mid-project and decisions about terminating a project
- Discuss the project closure phase
The Big Ideas in this Lesson
- Many little things can go wrong in a project, but as long as you get the fundamentals right and keep them on target, a project is likely to achieve substantial success. However, just because you have the fundamentals right at the beginning of a project doesn’t mean they’ll stay that way.
- Throughout the life of a project, you need to stop, look, and listen, and adjust course as necessary. Focus more on staying flexible than seeking accountability for every little thing that goes wrong in a project.
- By conducting regular, careful periodic reviews, you increase the chance of detecting strategic inflection points in your projects earlier enough to allow you time to adapt and adjust.
13.1 Getting the Fundamentals Right
Many little things can go wrong in a project, but as long as you get the fundamentals right and keep them on target, a project is likely to achieve substantial success. As you’ve learned throughout this book, the best way to get the fundamentals right is to collaborate with stakeholders to create a comprehensive, realistic plan, while also remaining adaptable to the inevitable living order changes that will come your way. But just because you have the big things right at the beginning of a project doesn’t mean they’ll stay that way. Throughout the life of a project, you need to stop, look, and listen. That is, you need to stop periodically to conduct mid-project reviews/audits; look at the data about scope, quality, and schedule; and listen to the words of team members. Regular stop-look-and-listen breaks will provide essential insights into the current state of your project, and its prospects for the future.
Even if you’re working on a project that seems identical to others you’ve worked on in the past, you need to stay alert to the possibility that the ground could suddenly shift beneath your feet. And the only way to know if that’s happening is to regularly stop, look and listen. Or to use the words of Andrew Grove, CEO of Intel from 1997 to 2005, you need to maintain a “guardian attitude” toward all your projects, cultivating a constant level of paranoia about what you might not know about your project (1999, 3). In particular, Grove argues, you need to be paranoid about strategic inflection points, which can upend even the best laid plans. In his book Only the Paranoid Survive, he explains the dangers strategic inflection points pose to entire organizations, although much of what he says can apply equally well to individual projects: