As a project nears completion, the sponsor directs the project manager to close it immediately and move to another project. Which essential task must the project manager finish before closing the project?

Even when a project is prematurely closed, essential administrative closure activities must still occur. Updating and closing the risk register and issue log ensures that all outstanding risks and issues are documented, their final status is recorded, and this critical information is stored for future reference and lessons learned. This is a foundational step for organizational process asset updates. Archiving project documents is also important, but updating the risk and issue logs is a more immediate and critical administrative closure task that ensures the project's final state of risks and issues is captured. Recognizing the team and celebrating are valuable for morale but not essential administrative closure tasks. Meeting with the sponsor to discuss starting a new project is an attempt to negotiate, not an essential administrative closure task for the current project.