Closing the Project

The deployment does not end when the last client system is deployed. Closing the project involves a handful of steps that complete the transition to the customer and provide guidance for the Deployment feature teams of future projects.

Note   The role of BDD 2007 does not end after the deployment project transitions to IT Operations. The team can maintain the distribution shares to keep them current. For example, computer deployments performed as part of daily operations benefit from having updated device drivers, security updates, core applications, and so on.

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Conducting the Project Review Conducting the Project Review
Producing the Close-out Report Producing the Close-out Report
Looking Ahead Looking Ahead

Conducting the Project Review

When the project is complete, the project team should hold a review meeting to discuss the project and identify what went well, what did not go well, what to replicate in future projects, and what to change. Without assigning blame, the members conduct the project review with the goals of learning from mistakes and improving future projects. Often called a postmortem, the project-review meeting sometimes takes place shortly before the end of the project rather than afterward, because team members often must leave the project shortly before it ends. The team must therefore conduct the meeting before customer sign-off.

The team documents suggestions for change as action items in the next project plan, if one is scheduled.

Producing the Close-out Report

The closeout report is the final physical deliverable of the deployment. It includes final versions of all the major deliverables: the vision/scope document, the functional specification, and so on. The product manager and program manager take the lead in compiling the close-out report, which the team and customer can use as a quick reference to the work performed during the project and as a basis for future planning. The closeout report also includes a summary of information solicited from the users and a summary of the next known steps.

Looking Ahead

The versioned-release concept means that the completion of one project is often a prelude to the next, in which the solution is iteratively built on and improved. Bearing in mind that resource, strategic, or other concerns may prevent or limit any immediate follow-ups to the just-completed desktop deployment, there are several possible next steps.

Although it is theoretically possible that the organization will be completely satisfied after the conclusion of the project and see no need for further change, most IT managers are constantly looking for ways in which the computing environment can be improved. The most immediate areas of concern will probably be the portions of the vision that were excluded by the scope of the just-completed project and that can be implemented in a future project as a versioned release. In a larger sense, remember that technology life-cycle management is ongoing and requires a long-term view, both of the state of computing technology and of the requirements of the organization itself.

The first order of business, then, will probably be to plan and conduct an updated enterprise deployment and life cycle management review to collect knowledge about the current state of the computing environment. The organization can then use that information to envision and plan future project work.

Note   In the future, each computer in the organization will be retired from service. The organization should develop a process in which retired computers are moved to known locations, data on their hard disks and BIOS is securely wiped, and asset information is updated. In many countries and regions, computers are considered hazardous waste and must be disposed of properly.

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