What If Your Project is Cancelled?

Any project may be cancelled due to changing corporate priorities or cost constraints. It can even happen to projects that are running perfectly.  If your project is cancelled, here’s what you can do to make the best of the situation.

• Communicate with your team. Emotions will be high and people will have questions.  Talk with your team, even though you might not have all the answers. Share whatever you do know about the cancellation. This news can be demoralizing, especially if your project was going well. Be prepared for a wide range of emotions. Team members might think they did something wrong. Reassure them that they did not.

Note: Be sure to ask management if they plan to reallocate resources to other projects and share what you learn with your project team members.

• Share the business rationale with stakeholders. Stakeholders might not be aware of the reasons for cancellation. Brief them on the details and any conditions that could prompt the project to resume. Collect the stakeholders’ views and questions. Discuss them with the project sponsor. Follow up with stakeholders when you receive answers.
• Install viable deliverables. Despite the cancellation, some deliverables still might generate business value. Produce proper documentation for the deliverables or request the resources needed to complete it. If you can’t get the resources, check with your stakeholders. They might be able to produce the documentation themselves. Be sure there is a process to capture the business value that’s produced.
• Archive partially completed deliverables. If your project is reinstated, you will want to retrieve any already completed work. Partial deliverables also might be useful for a future project. Capture the work performed and document where the materials can be found for future use.
• Follow formal project closure procedures. Use your project closeout processes, as if a normal closure had occurred. Terminate vendor contracts and process final payments. Close any time recording codes associated with your project. Get sponsor sign-off on closure documentation.

Have you had a project cancelled? What other steps did you perform to close the project? Did you run into issues trying to close out the cancelled project? Share your experience in the comments section.

For more about closing a project, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

Coming up:

I have an Office Hours in the works for September with Doug Rose and Chris Croft, two of my (many) idols in the LinkedIn Learning instructor community. Look for more info soon!

I’m almost done updating Project Management Foundations. In a few months, you can look for the updated edition, which includes some info on PMBoK7 and other changes.