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Celebrating Project Completion

Author: Sophia

what's covered
In this lesson, we'll talk about why it's important to celebrate a project once it's complete. Specifically, you will focus on:

Table of Contents

1. Celebrating Project Completion

When a project is completed, the project manager should provide the team with an opportunity to celebrate this accomplishment. While it’s true that everyone is ready to move on to other work, it's necessary to take the time and relax before another project begins.

Team members might shift to other projects or assignments whenever their individual work is complete, so organizing a team celebration may be difficult. However, it’s still worth the effort because a celebration can be an opportunity for the project manager to provide the following:

  • Reflection with the team on the work that was involved
  • Opportunity for everyone to recognize the time and commitment involved in creating a team
  • Acknowledgment of the efforts of individual team members
  • Sharing of lessons learned
A project celebration can take many forms, some of which include a team meeting, lunch, dinner, picnic, or another fun activity. What’s important is that the celebration is a time in which the project manager thanks the team for its contribution, and praises the team for the work it has done.

If possible, the project sponsor and stakeholders should be included in the celebration, as they are also members of the team. Furthermore, the rest of the team would be pleased to receive the sponsor and stakeholders’ acknowledgment and gratitude for helping to meet their goals.

hint
A project manager should be careful when praising individual team members and sharing lessons learned during the project celebrations.

It's critical that the spirit of teamwork is maintained, even during the end of a project celebration; however, if there are people whose efforts significantly impacted the project in a positive way, this is the time to reward them.

The project manager should be sensitive to the fact that some lessons learned are about the weaknesses of a project, which might damper the celebration. This is a time for enjoyment; gaining knowledge from the project's experience can occur on a different day.

summary
In this lesson, you learned why project celebrations are an important part of the closing process. It's important to acknowledge the hard work of everyone on the team.

Source: This work adapted from Sophia Author Jeff Carroll.