The final phase of the project life cycle is terminating the project. It starts after the project work has been completed, and includes various actions to properly close out the project.
The reason for properly terminating a project is to learn from the experience gained on the project in order to improve performance on future projects. Therefore, the actions relating with terminating the project should be identified and included in the project's starting out plan and should not be done merely as afterthoughts. These activities might include organising and filing project documents, receiving and making final payments, and conducting post-project evaluation meetings within both the contractor's and the organisation. The termination phase starts when performance of the project is completed and the result is accepted by the customer. It sometimes comes in the form of a checklist or automated system where areas will meet criteria or pass tests that was stated in the contract.
When a contractor completes a project for a customer, the contractor must verify that all the agreed-on terms were, in fact, provided. Such deliverables might include training or procedures manuals, drawings, flowcharts, equipment, software, brochures, reports, and data. In the future, the contractor may want to use some actual cost and schedule information from this completed project to help develop the schedule and cost estimates for a proposed future project. Another activity that must be performed during the termination phase is assuring that all payments have been collected from the customer. Many contracts include a progress payment clause, which states that the customer will make the final payment at the completion of the project. In some cases, the final payment is a high percentage of the total project price—for example, 25%. Also it should be verified that all payments have