Best practice to close project

[Michael M]

Hi All,

I'm fairly new to project server 2007, and would like to know what the best
way to close a project off. Currently our project managers are closing off
projects in various ways.
What I would like is
1. To disable the ability for users to put additional time to any tasks for
the project. I have used "Close task to update" and this seems to work ok
except the users can still see the tasks in the "My Tasks" area.
2. Users not to be able to see the tasks in the "My Tasks". Essentially i
want to minimise the amount of Project and Tasks the users can see, even if
they have the "Show Only Current Tasks" deselected.

Thanks
Michael

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Michael --

I'll throw out a few ideas and I know the others will share their toughts as
well

1. Cancel any tasks not needed in the project by setting the Remaining Work
to 0h on those tasks. Add a Note to the cancelled tasks explaining why you
cancelled them. Change the Milestone symbol from the black diamond to
anything else you want to use to indicate a cancelled task.

2. Update task progress on tasks completed during the final reporting
period.

3. Make all Milestone tasks as 100% complete, and mark cancelled tasks 100%
complete as well.

Your goal, up to this point, is to make sure that Project Professional 2007
shows a blue checkmark to the left of the Project Summary Task (Row 0) to
indicate that the project is entirely completed. The above steps are
appropriate for both desktop only projects and enterprise projects using any
version of Project Server.

4. Click Tools - Build Team from Enterprise. Set the Booking value to
Proposed for every enterprise resource and then click the OK button. Save
the project and then publish the project one final time.

The fourth step will remove the tasks for the completed project from the My
Tasks page of each project team member. The numbers for the project will
remain reportable in Data Analysis views. Hope these few ideas help.

 

[meganw]

Hi
Just to add to the project closure process.
We add the Publish column which allows you to set tasks to No if you wish to
remove them from the users timesheet and as an indication that the task has
been completed.
We have also created a Project Closure form in Infopath which has to be
filled in for completed projects, as well as the dialog box that includes our
phases such as completed.

I have then created a category named completed which I then move all closed
projects to this category which removes them from MSP.

Cheers

 

[Michael M]

Hi All,

We ended up using the first 3 steps outlines by Dale and the step outlined
by MeganW as our internal process for close project off.
Together this worked great.

Thanks all for your comment and suggestions.

Thanks

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Michael --

You are more than welcome for the help, my friend!

 

[meganw]

No prob, glad I could help.
Wish other people could respond to my questions too, hehe