When is a project really complete?
Hi Mark,
You asked: How do you handle completing a project beyond just the marking off or deleting the item from your list manager?
Good question! It would depend on the project and your setup. Here are some things that are pretty consistent for me to do though, when a project is complete:
- I move the project email folder from being a subfolder under PROJECTS to under zARCHIVES (this is an actual folder for me, not the Archive feature in my email program.) I rarely ever clean out the email folder before moving it, but I'm lucky in that we don't have tight quota limits. When in doubt, I save it, although if anyone else would need to see it ever, I copy/paste the information to a Lotus Notes database. [Remember, we're the company that has more Notes databases than we do staff! We use them a ton for collaboration, reference and discussions--instead of clogging everyone's email accounts.]
- I move the project hard copy folder from current Projects/Pending area of my files to Reference. I typically do clean it up to cull lots of the project detail that is no longer needed, is captured in the final product, or electronically stored in a Lotus Notes database somewhere. Questions that can help:
"How hard would it be to get this information again if I need it?"
"Who else has it?"
"Who else needs to see this?"
"If I got hit by a lottery ticket tomorrow, could someone else find the information they need on this project?"
- I also ask myself, "Is there a new chapter with this project? Do I need to create a new outcome? For example, with the GTD Interactive course, that was a 14 month project for me to "Launch the course." Once it launched, that chapter of the project was complete and one new project became "Run the GTD Interactive Pilot program."
- Also, for some of our larger collaborative projects, we'll often have a debrief meeting about the project to talk about what we learned and how we can do better next time. For my GTD Interactive project, as I was learning things along the way about the project, working with our partners, staff resources, costs etc., I was capturing notes about that that in a Lotus Notes database so that wouldn't be lost by the time we got to that debrief. That was helpful. I find too, that sometimes the rosy glasses come on after a project is really complete, and people can forget that there were some itchy, scratchy things we could have done better with during the project, because now it's a complete and all is well.
- And the ultimate question really is, "Do I have my attention on anything around this project right now?" I want to make sure there are no open loops about lessons learned, new outcomes, things to change in v2.0, course correction and feedback to share, etc.
Hope this helps,
Kelly
