Welcome to the Closing a project section. Here are the core actions for closing a project in Project IQ:

1. Close out remaining work
   
2. Complete key dates and deliverables
   
3. Reconcile project financials
   
4. Finalize project support items
   
5. Advance project to the next stage
   
6. Produce final status update
   
7. Harvest lessons learned

These are not sequential actions, and you may skip some based on your project delivery requirements.

Download Job Aid: Closing a project

Important: If you are not familiar with Project IQ, we recommend you review the Project IQ and Work IQ Overview page. It will provide you with a working knowledge of the Project IQ area.

Once your project has been successfully delivered, you need to complete the activities to close out the project and the supporting items in Project IQ. It is vital that these important actions are taken to close the project. This will remove all remaining work items and will ensure that it is not reported on as part of the active portfolios, programs, and projects in your organization. The focus at this final stage is to help you understand how to close your project.

Here are a few practical tips:

• We often find that despite the project being declared complete, there are often tasks in the project schedule with work remaining.  Therefore, to ensure that historical analysis on closed projects is accurate, and that resource reports reflect the true work assignments, all tasks should be closed. This ensures that the project shows as completed and there is no residual work assigned to the project team.

• Like closing out remaining work items in the project schedule, it is also important to ensure that all key dates and deliverables reflect the actual delivery dates, and the status is updated to reflect that all have been delivered and are completed.

• While it may not be possible to reconcile all project financials at the time the project is closed, due to delays in receiving and processing final project invoices, we need to ensure that all residual financial details are reconciled as soon as possible so that the project reflects complete and accurate financial information.

• In addition, all other project support items, such as issues, risks, decisions, and change requests should be reviewed and updated to reflect an accurate status at the time the project is closed.

• The actions taken to formally close the project will vary by organizational policy and project type.  For projects with a defined governance process, this typically involves advancing the project to the next, and final stage.  For projects without a defined process flow this would typically involve setting the project status to closed.

• You should also create a final status update so that the Project and appropriate support KPIs summarize the overall health of the project. 

• And finally, you should review the lessons learned captured during project execution and extract the relevant ones for your organizational best practice process improvement group.
  

---

_{Disclaimer: Some images in the instructional video and text instructions contained herein may appear different from (or not available) in your organization’s Sensei IQ instance due to specific custom configurations and/or continuous solution updates. Ensure that you are already an enabled user in the Sensei.IQ for Project application and check out the What’s New page. Contact your system administrator for any assistance.}