Chapter 18: Reviewing Projects and Creating Templates for Success

Welcome to this new and final part of the book. Here, we discuss how to gracefully close a project, whether or not its key objectives have been met. The normal tendency of developers is to close the project with a celebration, file the documents, and throw away the key. In this chapter, we will see how the process of closing a project systematically can add exponential value to your next project and to the organization. Our focus will be on the tools provided by Project that are used during the closing stages of a project.

Project closure is the time for introspection. It is the time to look back at the good, so-so, and bad aspects of the project that we are in the process of winding up. A project closure review is performed to analyze the schedule. Project provides two tools to draw conclusions from this schedule data and learn lessons from them. These lessons can be converted into templates in Project, for the benefit...