Low adoption, open defects and pressure to close

No. Closing in 9 days would release the team but leave the organisation with an unsupported product and unrealised benefits.

Test the closure criteria:

• Deliverables accepted: three severity-2 defects remain open, including manager delegation, which blocks a core workflow for 4% of users. Not met.
• Support ownership agreed: no service desk model exists, and the vendor warranty ends in 9 days. Not met.
• Warranty and defect liability clear: unresolved. Not met.
• Training and adoption plan: one webinar and no role-based guides is not a transition plan. Adoption is 35 weekly active users out of 1,200, far below the 60% assumption. Not met.
• Benefits tracking: no owner or measurement plan for the benefits case. Not met.

Closure is a lifecycle decision, not a resource-release decision. The correct move is to close the build phase and move into a defined hypercare or transition phase, with the project still accountable for exit criteria. If the sponsor insists on closure, document each exception, name an owner for each open item and do not release all delivery capability. Get the sponsor's acceptance of the residual risk in writing.

Days 1-7: stabilise and hand over. Agree a RACI with the service desk, including severity definitions, escalation path and knowledge articles. Extend the vendor warranty or negotiate a 60-day defect liability for severity-1 and severity-2 issues. Assign defect owners for delegation, mobile duplication and SSO timeout. Owner: PM and service desk manager.

Days 8-21: remove blockers. Fix manager delegation and SSO first; they affect access and workflow, not just convenience. Provide a temporary workaround for mobile duplication. Publish role-based guides for managers, employees and HR administrators. Owner: product lead and HR systems team.

Days 22-45: adoption recovery. Segment users: managers, HR administrators and general employees have different barriers. Run short role-based sessions, manager dashboards and floor-walking. Use champions in each department. The HR director owns adoption, not the project team. Owner: HR director with PM support.

Days 46-60: measure and decide. Metrics: weekly active users, successful transactions, HR ticket volume by category, defect closure rate, adoption by department, and training completion. Exit criteria for hypercare: zero severity-1, agreed severity-2 threshold, support SLA met for two consecutive weeks, and adoption trending to target.

The HR director's 'training problem' statement is only partly right. Training is one lever; defects and support design are the others.

Sequence: sponsor first, then HR director, then service desk manager, then vendor. The sponsor controls the closure decision and the team release; the HR director owns adoption; the service desk manager must accept support before warranty ends.

• To the sponsor: 'I do not recommend closure in 9 days. Three severity-2 defects are open, no support model is agreed and adoption is 35 weekly users against a 60% target. Closing now releases the team but leaves the organisation exposed. I recommend a 60-day hypercare with defined exit criteria and a named owner for each open item.'
• To the HR director: 'Adoption is not only a training issue. Manager delegation and SSO defects block users, and there are no role-based guides. We need you to own the adoption campaign and assign departmental champions. I will provide the metrics.'
• To the service desk manager: 'We need a support RACI, severity definitions and knowledge articles before the warranty ends. Otherwise your team inherits unresolved defects with no vendor cover.'
• To the vendor: 'We require a warranty extension or a defect liability period for the open severity-2 items, with named owners and dates.'

Do not announce a closure date until the exit criteria are agreed. Communicate what is known, what is not yet known and the next decision point.