The project's products must be passed to an operational and maintenance environment prior to the project being closed. This may happen as a single release at the end of the project, or the project approach may include phased delivery where products are handed over in a number of releases.
In the case of a premature closure, there may be some products that have been approved but not yet handed over and, depending on the Project Board guidance, the ownership of some or all of those products may need to be transferred to the customer.
When handing over products, the Benefits Review Plan may need to be updated to include the postproject benefits review(s) of the performance of the project's products in operational use. Such benefits reviews may identify whether there have been any side-effects (beneficial or adverse) that could proVide useful lessons for other projects.
It is not a project activity to undertake benefits reviews post-project, only to plan for such benefits reviews to occur. If the project is part of a programme, then the post-project benefits reviews need to be covered by the programme's benefits management activities.
PRINCE2 recommends the following:
✔ Prepare following on action recommendations for the project's products
✔ Check the benefits review plan includes post-project activities to confirm benefits that cannot be measured until after the project's products have been in use for some time.
✔ Examine how the configuration management strategy to confirm how products are to be handed over to those who will maintain them.
