Closing out projects

by | Mar 18, 2023 | Project Management

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great Books Publishing is continuing to grow. The customized eBooks line of work is continuing to expand, and they now have a lot of experience from the eBook projects that they have completed for their first eBook customer, a local college, and for their newer customers. However, as new projects come in and start to run into problems, some of the project managers in the project management office and their manager, Sophia, were discussing how it seems like it is déjà vu all over again – some of the same problems that they thought they had solved in working with supervisors and their teams on past projects keep on occurring. The eBook projects are functioning well, and customers are happy with the results. Repeat orders are coming in and new customers are turning to Great Books for their eBook production needs. However, there are just some problems that seem to keep popping up. One of the project managers even described dealing with these problems as being like playing the popular arcade game of “Whack-a-Mole” – as soon as you deal with one to make it disappear, the same one or another one just pops up. It seems like a never-ending struggle to try and solve some of these problems, especially when some seem like they were already solved on another earlier project.

In the PM handbook that Sophia had implemented, when projects were completed, the supervisors finished tracking all of the actual effort and costs and turned that information over to cost accounting for billing purposes. As Sophia and colleagues implemented the Project Management Office (PMO), they modified the PM manual to have a copy of this information also shared with the project management office. They have found this information to be sometimes useful as historical data to help develop estimates for new projects as requests for new eBooks come in from their customers.

The PMO team was discussing making changes to the PM manual and holding a short training for supervisors to implement some improvements to their project completion processes. They wanted to change their standard job template to incorporate these additions: • a planned task for supervisors to close out the project, • a task to lessons learned report, and • an optional task for a closing celebration for the team to mark the end of the project. They felt that it was important that the PMO start capturing lessons learned. These could be collated by the supervisors at the end of the project, or they could encourage supervisors to plan, schedule and hold a project closing meeting with their team members to thank the team members and to collect lessons learned from all of the team. They could also invite feedback or participation from the relevant Customer Service Representatives and account managers. The PMO received management approval for these changes, updated the PM manual, and held a brief training for supervisors. Supervisors liked the ideas, especially because the close-out meeting or team celebration would give them a chance to recognize and reward team members and would serve to motivate the teams for future projects.

As time went on, the PMO started collecting these lessons learned from many projects. The PMO staff started to look at the data from the lessons learned across the projects. They examined frequency of the six kinds of issues that were being encountered on the projects. Based on feedback from the leadership training that they had done with the supervisors, they had thought that the major cause of delays and extra costs on projects were part-time student employees calling off from work at the last minute, leaving planned work not performed until another resource could be assigned to it, which was often difficult as there were few slack resources. They felt that this made tasks late and sometimes delayed projects from completing on time. Their analysis showed that that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, only three of the problems on projects were caused by unplanned absences. In their Pareto analysis, the PMO staff identified three key problems, which they highlighted in red. Delays in obtaining necessary reprint permissions from certain publishers were the largest cause of problems, accounting for 34% of the problems encountered by eBook projects. Production staff calling in sick was the next most frequent problem, accounting for 28% of the problems. Customer changes, which often caused rework and delays, were the root cause of another 20% of the problems. The PMO now knew what the most important issues were that were causing eBook projects to be delayed and could make recommendations to mitigate each of these problems.

Comment on the following aspects of the case study:

a) What are some of the reasons why it is important to close out a project? What can project managers accomplish in closing out a project?

b) Why should projects capture lessons learned? What are some ways that the project team members, project managers and the organization can use lessons learned?

c) What benefits come from celebrating project accomplishments? Do you believe that rewards and recognition can serve as motivators for staff?

 

 

Sample solution

Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell. 

In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.


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God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.

Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.

To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.

 

References

Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.

Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.

Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.

Sample Solution

a) Closing out a project is an essential step in the project management process as it allows all stakeholders to evaluate the success of the project and identify areas of improvement. Project managers can use this time to create a final report summarizing the objectives, timeline, budget, results, and any key lessons learned from the experience. This helps ensure that future projects are completed on time/on budget with fewer delays or problems as well as providing an opportunity for team members to reflect upon their successes and challenges faced.

Sample Solution

a) Closing out a project is an essential step in the project management process as it allows all stakeholders to evaluate the success of the project and identify areas of improvement. Project managers can use this time to create a final report summarizing the objectives, timeline, budget, results, and any key lessons learned from the experience. This helps ensure that future projects are completed on time/on budget with fewer delays or problems as well as providing an opportunity for team members to reflect upon their successes and challenges faced.

b) Capturing lessons learned is important for several reasons; it allows teams to review what went right (or wrong) during development phase so that similar issues can be avoided in the future thus improving efficiency overall. Project teams should set aside time at end of each sprint/project cycle document their findings so they’re able access them easily when needed. Additionally organization-wide metrics such as customer satisfaction or employee engagement can also benefit from taking note these insights; doing so helps implement strategies maximize performance while also identifying opportunities growth.

c) Celebrating accomplishments helps foster positive atmosphere amongst staff by acknowledging their hard work and effort towards achieving goals set forth – no matter how small victory may be. Rewards recognition provide incentive remain motivated throughout process which subsequently leads better outcomes; whether it’s something physical like bonus check or verbal praise doesn’t really matter since act itself shows appreciation for employees’ contributions which ultimately boosts morale within workplace environment.

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