LEADERSHIP

134 • LEADERSHIP
let down your guard yet—if you ignore this step, you open the
door to the many things that can still derail your project’s success.
Team members may lose focus, owners may be overly
anxious to accept the deliverables, and many people’s lives will
change as they move on in their professional endeavors and
personal relationships. Stay alert and stay in close contact with
all stakeholders. Make sure you have the personal commitment
to the final completion plan from each responsible party.
Formal Notice of Completion – After the final items have
been delivered and the project has been completed according
to the documentation, send a written notice of project completion
to the stakeholders. Contractual responsibilities, ownership,
and authority may dramatically change at this point.
Check with your legal and financial team to make sure that
your i’s are dotted and your t’s are crossed.
Formal Acceptance – This may come as a legal document,
a letter of acceptance, or a thank-you note. If a legal document
is required by the project’s documentation or by your organization’s
policies, don’t ignore this final task. The job isn’t done
until the paperwork is signed, sealed, and delivered. And as
always, the project leader is ultimately the person who accepts
the responsibility.
Final Reports
If required, a project’s final reports will probably be outlined
in the project’s documentation. These may include quality-assurance
audits, specification-compliance test results,
engineering documentation, training manuals, or as-built
drawings. It’s not unusual for project documentation to include
union, state, or federal labor-compliance reports as well.