By Jane Sandwood

After wrapping up a project, it’s important to gain feedback from workers and stakeholders in order to improve business practices and help future projects to run smoothly.

Surveys are a valuable tool that project managers can use to collect feedback from team members who might otherwise not give their input. In addition to comments and ideas, surveys allow you to easily capture project closure metrics such as stakeholder satisfaction and employee engagement.

At the end of a big project, a closure survey can help companies to learn how all parties involved feel about the success of the plan and offer suggestions on how to improve. When conducting a project closure survey, it’s important to keep in mind both your audience and your end goal.

Who to Target

A project closure survey should gather information from all parties involved to gain the most valuable insight into the minds of employees and stakeholders alike. Managers should ensure that the survey reaches not only their team members but also anyone involved with the project and those who were impacted by the project, such as investors and key end-users.

With a large sample pool, it can sometimes be difficult to analyze and interpret the vast amounts of survey data collected. By breaking information into demographic categories, such as management versus team members, companies can address interdepartmental differences in opinion.

What to Include

Surveys make it easy for employees to express themselves by giving structure and organization to their feedback. Questions can pinpoint common themes and ideas regarding a recent project, and data can be easily be organized by using a five-star rating system. A good survey should include space for comments after each question as well so that people can expound upon their answers if they want to, or provide additional feedback.

In order to find out if the results of a project have met everyone’s expectations, there are several important topics a survey should cover. A project closure survey should generate information by asking questions about issues such as:

• Has the project met the expected results?
• Did team members feel that the parameters of the project were well defined?
• Did the project team communicate effectively?
• Were the right tools and processes used to complete the project?
• Why or why didn’t everything go according to plan?
• How successful was the project overall?

Every employee’s time is valuable, so a good survey shouldn’t be too long or complicated. There should be a limited number of questions, and the wording should be kept relatively simple. The language of a question can influence results, so to get accurate data, companies should be careful about how each question in a survey is asked. Businesses can customize existing online surveys, or hire an expert to help them create the ideal project closure survey for their team.