4.10. Manage Project Closure
💡 First Principle: Closure isn't just "the work is done" — it requires explicit stakeholder approval, validated readiness for whatever comes next (operations, next phase), and deliberate conclusion of every open thread (procurement, financials, resources, lessons learned), because unclosed loose ends become someone else's undocumented risk.
Enablers: obtain project stakeholder approval of completion, determine criteria for successfully closing the project or phase, validate readiness for transition (e.g., to an operations team or the next phase), and conclude activities to close the project or phase (final lessons learned, retrospectives, procurement closeout, financial closeout, resource release).
Validating transition readiness is distinct from validating that deliverables are complete — a technically complete deliverable that the receiving operations team isn't trained or staffed to support isn't actually ready for transition, and closing the project anyway just moves the risk downstream.
⚠️ Exam Trap: Treating "deliverables complete and accepted" as sufficient grounds to close. If a scenario shows the receiving team isn't ready to take over, the correct answer addresses transition readiness before formal closure, not after.
Reflection Question: Describe a project or phase closure where a loose end (a procurement not fully closed, a lesson not captured, a team not ready to receive the work) surfaced as a problem later. What closure activity would have caught it?
