The close project or phase is the last phase of the project life cycle. This phase involves closing your projects and making reports of the level of success to the project owner. It also involves handing over the remaining deliverables to the customers, passing of documentation to business, releasing staff and equipment, canceling contracts with the supplier, and informing the stakeholders about the closure.
The first step in implementing a close project or phase is to create the project closure report which will then be approved or rejected by the sponsor. The report will determine if there is indeed a need to close the project.
In a nutshell, the close project or phase is all about finalizing all activities within the project management process to complete the project. The benefit of this tool is that it provides a formal method to end the project and release the resources of the organization to pursue new projects or endeavors.
Once the project management plan has been closed, a post-implementation review is usually done to determine the success of the projects as well as identify the lessons learned.
This project management term is defined in the 5th edition of the PMBOK.