Search This Blog

16 January 2013

Project Cancellation

While you are directing and managing your project execution, your sponsor tells you that your project has just been terminated. Will you complete Verify Scope process before closing your project?

Yes, verify scope provides an opportunity for the PM and the sponsor to document the project status at that moment... that can be used for lessons learnt as well for future projects. (Name withheld)

No.

Process 5.4, Verify Scope is the process of formalizing acceptance of the completed project deliverables and includes reviewing deliverables with the customer or sponsor to ensure that they are completed satisfactorily and obtaining formal acceptance of deliverables.... (PMBOK) Since the project has been canceled, no more deliverables will be accepted. Completing the Verify Scope process would waste resources.
 
Exceptions not indicated by the question
  • The terms of a cancellation could include acceptance of whatever has been completed.
  • The company could preserve the deliverables in their current state for use in future projects, in which case, knowing their quality would have value.
Note 1: If one traces the flow of outputs from the Verify Scope process, the next step for any Accepted Deliverable is process 4.6, Close Project or Phase.
 
Note 2: Documenting the project status at the time of cancellation would start with Work Performance Measurements produced by following process 5.5, Control Scope, the process of monitoring the status of the project and product scope and managing changes to the scope baseline. (PMBOK).
 
The PM would then follow process 10.5, Report Performance, to analyze the project's progress, producing Performance Reports. For the final step, following process 4.4, Monitor and Control Project Work, the PM updates Project Documents, including performance reports and issue logs. (The PM would also make other updates to Project Documents during that preceding processes.)
 
Note 3: Non-accepted deliverables would be subject to the Direct and Manage Project Execution or Perform Quality Control processes (and their design and production partner processes). The Direct and Manage Project Execution and the Close Project of Phase processes might invoke some sort of Disposal process to handle the non-accepted deliverables.

Copyright (C) 2013, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for use not involving publication.

No comments:

Post a Comment