Paul Naybour
List:
1. Acceptance (Handover)
2. Commissioning (Handover)
3. Transfer of Responsibility (Handover)
4. Team Dissolution (Closeout)
5. Post Project review (Closeout)
Description:
1. There needs to be an acceptance procedure and demonstration that the project has delivered everything required/contacted too. This would usually be signed off or documented along with the acceptance criteria for the products in the contract, but if no contract is in place the Project Management Plan would contain these criteria. Acceptance may be phased or progressive over time up to the end of the handover stage. It is the formal recognition that the project has discharged its obligations to the sponsor and the user.
2. Following the acceptance, the commissioning stage will enable the users to understand how to operate the products and use them to obtain the benefits for which the project was undertaken. This can take a long period of time depending on the product, as with a software system, it may require loading/installation of various types of data and transferring information from superseded systems. O&M manuals would also be transferred at this point if they exist to help the commissioning procedure.
3. Once the two previous stages are complete, the users will take full responsibility of the products meaning they will have to be happy and satisfied they have all the information required to operate the product. There may be arrangements in place after the handover such as a training service or maintenance contract, but this stage effectively completes the handover.
4. Team dissolution follows the successfully handover of the product and requires that the team be disbanded. Any unemployment issues following this stage must be dealt with in a reasonable, coordinated and sympathetic way, and if the project had a long lifecycle, the team may worked together for a number of years and care and recognition of performance should take place.
5. To ensure that the project has met its objectives and that the project team can be discharged of any further obligations to the project, a post project review is undertaken. This will generally instigate a lessons learned review as this will benefit future projects and give an overall review of the lessons learnt throughout the project from concept to handover/closeout.