10 things you should do near the end of a project

Depending on the size of your organization, you may treat project management as a casual practice or you may have an involved PMO. In either case, you probably go through the typical inception, elaboration, and construction phases of a project. But when it comes to the end of a project, many project managers come up just short of the finish line. Failure to handle the final steps can add confusion to an initiative and may lead to customer dissatisfaction, unhappy staff, and a project dragging on longer than necessary.

Here are a few things you should be thinking about when you get to the end of your next project. Some of these items are purely administrative, but many of them will help get you one step closer to ensuring that your project is successful.

Note: This information is also available as a PDF download.
1: Finalize testing

Testing can be a drain on people, and many of us don’t like to do it — especially when it takes a few rounds. I have seen complex projects that were four to six months long have a day or two scheduled for testing. Not scheduling an adequate amount of testing usually ends up with problems occurring during the first few weeks of an implementation. Don’t take a shortcut here and minimize the importance of testing; otherwise, you’ll take on the additional risk of having a painful rollout.
2: Finalize training

Users? Who cares about users? Well, many projects are done for their benefit, so make sure you have all your testing materials completed and delivered. Failure to do so will most likely manifest itself in the form of angry phone calls from irate users in the middle of the night.
3: Validate deliverables

You’ve checked all your boxes and cleaned out your inbox, and you really think you’re done. But what does your customer think? Schedule time with customers to review all the deliverables and ensure they have been met. In some cases, there may be a few outstanding issues still unresolved when you get to your scheduled end date. Early on in your project, you should have made an agreement that determines how this will affect your end date if this situation occurs.
4: Get project signoff

After you’ve agreed that all the deliverables have been met, request a formal signoff on the project documentation. Doing so helps ensure that everybody is in agreement on the state of the project. Since this signoff usually signals the formal end of the project, be careful not to make your customers feel pressured into signing. If they do this without understanding what it means, you will likely end up with an unsatisfied customer if an issue arises at a later date.
5: Release the team

Now that the project is done, where is your team going? Depending on the organization, they may be sent back to a development pool or into the business. Or maybe they need to go drum up some work for themselves within the company. No matter what it is, make sure you spend time with them and set a clear end date for when you no longer need their services. Also don’t forget that you probably need to complete any performance review documents that need to be added to their file.
6: Analyze actual vs. planned

Resources. Did you really get away with only one developer/tester for 10 weeks or did you need to scramble and get more people? What about the amount of time you scheduled for your business partners? Understanding how well you hit these targets will help you better allocate resources for your next project and set more realistic expectations when it comes to a project’s duration.

Budget. How much was the project going to cost? Did you come in on budget, under budget, over budget? Sitting down to understand the answers to these basic questions should give you some insight into a critical area of any project.
7: Archive documentation

During any project, we seem to create huge amounts of documentation. It can range from scope documents and project plans to contracts and meeting minutes. Whatever it is, when you are done you should have someplace to keep it based on the retention policy of your company. You’ll be glad you did when your phone rings two years from now and somebody asks you to explain the rationale behind a choice you made during the course of the project.
8: Ensure contract closure

It’s not unusual for a project to have its own budget. You also may have contracts for hardware, software, or professional services. When you’re done, make sure that you verify that all the terms of your contracts have been met, request final invoices from vendors and submit them to AP, and close out any associated financial accounts, if necessary.
9: Conduct a postmortem meeting

What types of risks did you identify and mitigate? What went really well that you want to ensure you do again next time? Have a meeting with all the project stakeholders and relevant participants to provide them with a forum to express any lessons learned.
10: Perform a self assessment

So it’s finally over. After all the hard work has been completed, you’ve made sure that all the i’s have been dotted and all the t’s crossed. Now what do you do? It’s important to get some feedback on your performance from the people you interacted with during the project. If you have the opportunity to send out a 360-degree feedback survey to as many individuals as possible, I would recommend it. It will help you assess how you’re progressing and will give you some great direction in deciding which personal growth opportunities you should focus on.

This list won’t be the same for everybody and will depend on your organization and how it implements projects. But if you can do them, it will always make the transition to the next project smoother.

Quickly access important applications

Unless you change the Start menu to "classic" mode, Windows Server 2003 sports a slightly modified version of the Start menu that was first seen in Windows XP. WS2K3 also features the Quick Launch area immediately to the right of the Start button. You can easily customize both of these areas by adding shortcuts to programs that are frequently used.

To add an item to the Start menu so it appears above the list of frequently used applications, right-click the shortcut for the item or its executable. From the shortcut menu, choose Pin To Start Menu. Now, when you click the Start button, you'll be able to quickly access this application without traversing multiple folders.

Adding programs to the Quick Launch area is also fairly simple. Just right-click and drag the application to the Quick Launch area. When you let go of the right mouse button, you'll have two options: either copy the item to the Quick Launch area or create a shortcut to it. However, after you add several items to this area, you must click the double-arrow menu to view them all.

Delete an "undeletable" file in Windows XP

Have you ever tried to delete a file in Windows Explorer and received the error message that it could not delete the file because it was in use? This can happen even when you know for a fact that the file is not in use.

You may open a command prompt and try to delete the file with the Delete command. But this method also fails.

Here's how you can delete an "undeletable" file. Follow these steps:

1. Close all open programs.
2. Open a command prompt.
3. Right-click the taskbar, and select Task Manager.
4. On the Processes tab, select Explorer.exe, and click the End Process button.
5. Minimize Task Manager, but don't close it.
6. At the command prompt, use the Delete command to remove the file, and close the command prompt.
7. In Task Manager, go to File | New Task (Run).
8. In the Create New Task dialog box, enter Explorer.exe, and click OK.
9. Close Task Manager.

Get more information from Task Manager

Windows XP's Task Manager is a very useful tool when it comes to troubleshooting problems. Not only does it help you terminate hung applications, but it also provides you with detailed information about all the processes currently running on your computer.

When you select the Processes tab, the default detail view displays four columns of information about each process:

• Image Name: The name of the process.
• User Name: The user who started the process.
• CPU: The percentage of the CPU's capacity that a process is currently using.
• Mem Usage: The amount of memory the process requires to perform its job.

While these four columns provide you with a basic idea of the process and how it affects the system, you can customize this display with your choice of 21 other columns to get even more detailed information. Here's how:

1. Pull down the View menu and choose Select Columns.
2. Select the check boxes adjacent to the columns you'd like to add.

If you're unsure of the type of information that a particular column displays, access Task Manager Help Topics from the Help menu and search for the term "Process counter column headings." This will open a page with detailed descriptions of each column.

Manually clean out the Temp folder in XP

As you probably know, you can use Windows XP's Disk Cleanup tool to free up hard disk space by getting rid of all sorts of unused and obsolete files. One of the places that Disk Cleanup checks is the Temp folder, which can be a big culprit when it comes to wasted disk space.

While Disk Cleanup can usually clean out the Temp folder for you, it can sometime get stuck there--especially if the Temp folder is full of files and folders. In other situations, Disk Cleanup inadvertently leaves unnecessary waste in the Temp folder.

Either case requires a manual cleanup. To quickly locate and clean out the Temp folder, follow these steps:

1)Shut down and restart Windows XP.
2)Open the Run dialog box by pressing [Windows]R.
3)Type %Temp% in the Open text box, and click OK.

Windows Explorer will immediately launch the Temp folder. Because you just restarted the system, you can safely delete any files and folders that you find there.

Force Disk Cleanup to delete all temporary files

If you’ve ever run the Microsoft Windows XP’s Disk Cleanup utility, you probably discovered that your temporary files occupy a significant amount of space. You might select the Temporary Files check box in order to allow the Disk Cleanup utility to delete the files in the Temp folder, but the Disk Cleanup utility will not remove all the files. The reason for this oddity is that the configuration for the Disk Cleanup utility does not allow deletion of files accessed in the last seven days.
Alter the parameters

By altering the LastAccess value in the registry, you can configure the Disk Cleanup utility to delete all the files in the Temp folder regardless of the last accessed date. Here’s how:
1) Launch the Registry Editor (Regedit.exe).

2) Go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersion
ExplorerVolumeCachesTemporary Files

3) Locate and double-click the LastAccess value.

4) When you see the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, change the Value Data setting from 7 to 0 and click OK.

5)To complete the operation, close the Registry Editor and restart Windows XP.

Changing the value to 0 will force the Disk Cleanup utility to delete all the files in the Temp folder every time you select the Temporary Files check box.

Automatically generate and assign strong passwords in Windows XP

Computer users consistently use very simplistic logic when creating passwords. For example, many of us choose meaningful words, personal dates, or a word commonly found in the dictionary because it makes the password easy to remember. These common practices cause us to sacrifice the security that passwords are intended to provide.

If you’re really at a loss when it comes to thinking of a strong password, you can let Windows XP create and assign a random password to your account. To let Windows XP generate your password, follow these steps. (Warning: Before you follow these steps, please be sure that you are paying careful attention and are ready to actually use a password that might not be as memorable as you’re accustomed to! Also, you cannot use this tip on a Windows Server domain.)

1) Open a Command Prompt window and type:

net user username /random (username is your login account name)

2) Press [Enter]. Windows XP will randomly generate a secure password, as well as assign that strong password to your account. Windows XP will also display the strong password so you can remember it.

At your discretion, you may want to create a Password Reset Disk at this point. This disk will allow you to gain access to your computer in the event you forget your password. Here’s how to create the disk:

1) Open the Control Panel and double-click the User Accounts tool.
2) Click your account icon.
3) Select Prevent A Forgotten Password under Related Tasks.
4) Follow the instructions provided by the wizard.