Project Closure

Closure is the planned termination of an initiative, product or service. Once closure occurs, teams and individuals will be re-allocated and work can no longer continue.

Closure can refer to the termination of an initiative (work with a defined start and end date), product (continuous delivery of work), service, application or just one of its components such as the tool spaces used, team members deployed etc.

The Product Owner (sometimes Work Owner) ensures that all the necessary steps are completed and that the stakeholders have been communicated with before starting closure.

Why is Closure important?

There may be a number of reasons for completing closure such as:

Product is no longer generating revenue to support the costs of maintaining it
Organization no longer wants to be in a specific market segment/region
Transition to a new /upgrade of current
- Application
- Database
- Platform
Re-assignment of workforce
Decision to sunset outdated software
Introduction of new standards or regulatory requirements

Initiative Closure
Cadence: Once during the initiative/product/service lifecycle. Description: Formal approval from the business and technology teams that confirms acceptance of the initiative outcomes and that all related financial transactions have been completed. Formal approval on the business decision on sunsetting a product/service. Note: The ending or phasing out of products or services is dependent upon a number of considerations
Inputs	Objectives	Outputs
Updated Risk Assessment Regular funding reviews All testable issue types (e.g. stories) closed and have test coverage or moved to sustaining All critical defects closed/medium-low have workaround in production All artifacts related to initiative/ product/ service stored in a repository All tool spaces ready to be archived	Archive all relevant artifacts and spaces related to an initiative/ product/ service that has come to an end Obtain formal signoff on the final outcomes of an initiative Formalize a business decision on sunsetting a product/ service	Approval by stakeholders to close the initiative/ product/ service Storage of all relevant artifacts in a repository Archival of all tool spaces used for the initiative/ product/ service Completion and submission of Request Initiative/Project Archival form in Service Now
Roles and Responsibilities
Product Owner: Confirms all objectives of the initiative, product or service are met and initiative artifacts are archived. IT AVP And Business VP: Approves the request for closure. Tool Owners: Removes access, archives tools/tool spaces. EPMO: Updates the status of the initiative, product or service and checks finances.

Completing a closure request?

Product Owner (or designate) must submit a Request Initiative/Project Archival form in Service Now.
Product Owner confirms all objectives of the initiative are met and initiative artifacts are archived in the artifact repository (see the table below for types of closure)
Product owner (or designate) confirms which tool spaces need to be archived and submits the form.
Form is automatically sent to various stakeholders for approval and tools archival
Enterprise tools supported on this form: PLANVIEW, JIRA, CONFLUENCE, qTEST and BLAZEMETER