Project Documentation: Why it’s important for a Successful Project?
A project manager organizes all the documents regarding a project to ensure complete control, management, and execution to accomplish the project with success.
Project documentation is the process of creating the key documents necessary to run a project smoothly and efficiently.
For instance, such documents may comprise business cases, project requirement sheets, or status reports. Moreover, the project documentation procedure portrays a comprehensive approach for assembling such vital documents.
This kind of documentation will be accessed by the entire team anytime and certainly, your project would progress without any hindrance.
By following these directions, you will be able to keep track of the documents during the workflow. Other than this, the project documentation procedure includes a clear description of the format, layout, and extent of written content.
Usually, it is the responsibility of a project manager to carry out a standardized project documentation process. Project documentation is generally a systemized institutional technique that should be followed by the entire crew. This tool is very necessary for the prosperity of your projects.
Why Is Project Documentation Important?
Each project is different from the other so there can’t be anyone template that fits all the businesses when you have to document that project.
However, a general one-page template can serve as a generous starting point. The documentation will become more comprehensive as the project proceeds. In order to make things more systemized, you might need to split them.
How to Create a Good Project Documentation?
- Gather all Project Documentation Under One Roof
- Easy Access and Search
- Keep it Concise
- Ensure Collaboration
The finished form of the document is often not looked at by the team which makes it quite frustrating. The main reason to document the plan is to define the course of the project that is to be followed by everyone.
There are some ways to make sure that the effort you put in documentation is not misspent.
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Gather all Project Documentation Under One Roof
During the communication, the information related to the project is likely to scatter across emails, meetings, and chats, creating confusion among the team members without an authentic source. So, in order to avoid that chaos, all the project-oriented documents must be gathered in one place that will serve as the definitive source and save time.
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Easy Access and Search
If the approach to the documentation is easier then the team members will read the document to get the information they require. You should make certain that the documentation tool you are utilizing should be reliable and equipped with fast search elements.
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Keep it Concise
The project documentation should be detailed enclosing all vital factors but concisely. It would be tiresome for the employees to read a bundle of pages. So, mention only what is required with clarity and keep the audience in view.
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Ensure Collaboration
It is not wise to laminate the documents of the project hastily as the project undergoes evolution as the planning progresses where some of the details may change or some can be added to it. So, your documents need to be updated. Effective consultation with stakeholders and provide them access to give the feedback and then update if required.
What are the Purposes of Project Documentation?
The most important point and probably the first one to document the project is that having things in written form will allow you to think about your idea and to validate if it really makes sense. It makes project management so easy along with the effort of your team to:
- Elucidate the objectives and expectations of the project
- Split the tasks into manageable fractions
- Plan and allot resources
- Make certain that all stakeholders are being updated regarding the progress
- Track all the tasks of a project
Project Documentation Phases
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Initiation & Planning
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Monitoring & Control
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Project Closure
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Change Control
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Communications & Requirements
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Procurement
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Cost & Finance
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Project Quality
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Project Reporting
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Risk & Issue Management
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Project Scheduling
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Staff Management
Project Initiation & Planning Template
At times in some projects, everyone doesn’t have identical views regarding the propagation of the project. People would lose proper direction owing to the absence of a clear vision that causes chaos. Such situations can be overcome by Project Initiation Document-PID.
It is the topmost level of project planning. This document encloses all the data required for the initiation of a project and the important information is shared with the stakeholders. Having a properly planned project initiation document will allow everyone to proceed in a uniform direction.
The attributes of the project initiation document are that it outlines the scope of the project and justifies your project and if necessary it secures the budget of your project.
It also highlights the responsibilities and parts of the members of the team. It provides the required information to the people so that the project will be on right track from the beginning.
Almost all of the organizations have their specific project initiation template customized according to their desires and the information residing in them is also quite similar.
Change Request Template
| Multiple Project Task Management | Change Management Plan Template | Project Scope Statement | Work Breakdown Structure |
In all aspects of life, change is something that is inevitable. In the universe of business, if the change is managed efficiently then it can lead to better performance, elevated employee satisfaction, and revolutionary growth.
Change can take place at the organizational level for instance introduction of a new product, alterations in staff members, or any project-related change as in resources or schedule.
Change management grants you a systemized approach to deal with alterations so that project and organization in addition to adapt, also manage the implementation of those changes with smooth transitions along with successful outcomes.
Change request template is a fundamental tool in project management utilized for proposing any change to a particular project. Such a template serves as a great base for handling change requests in the project.
It is the utmost responsibility of the project manager to manage change with great care and execute a comprehensive change control process so that the project stays within the approved restricted boundaries.
Change is an unavoidable factor in the life cycle of a project as there are many stakeholders in some projects having various interests levels.
The one who recognizes the need for change would fill the change request template or form and forward it to the team. Then the project manager in collaboration with the team analyzes the impacts of that particular change whether it will be good or not and if it doesn’t cross the accepted limits of the project.
The request for change is then forwarded to the change control board along with the analyses report of the team where it is considered critically and then either accepted or rejected.
In case the change is accepted, the entire documentation regarding that change must be updated carefully and must be informed to the stakeholders. Few changes also need to rearrange schedule, cost, or scope.
There are a lot of formats of such templates based on the organization. Following is shown a basic change request template:
Schedule Planning Template
| Project Milestone Chart Template | Change Management Communication Plan | Production Schedule Template |
The basic purpose of a communication plan is to convey information efficiently to different stakeholders. The plan recognizes the information needed to deliver, to whom it is targeted, and through which channel.
This plan is helpful when launching different products, taking new initiatives, and during crises. A communication plan assists you to make the purpose of launching a new product clearly and sorting out the messages to deliver officially to a particular audience.
Moreover, in time of crisis, a communication plan can aid if a former marketing message or a decision has hurt your reputation in the market with stakeholders or clients.
In the absence of a communication plan, the organization wouldn’t be ready when disaster approaches. A simple communication plan template is shown underneath:
Communication Plan Template
Within a schedule plan template, work is based on clients, accounts, or locations. The resource can be assigned with a particular task permanently or can be left unassigned and would be allocated as the template is adjusted with a calendar period.
Commonly, schedule templates are known as rota templates or base rosters. Those who are responsible for designing a schedule, gather all the work including shifts, jobs, and activities in a template for almost up to twelve weeks.
Templates grant flexibility to design work as a placeholder for work where all the details can’t be disclosed until nearer to the roster time. Such templates can be helpful for those organizations where you are obliged to give clients a certain number of hours for work.
By using pre-defined templates, the identification of work became very easy as it is already scheduled.
Cost & Finance / Budget Template
| Project Cost Estimation Template |
The budget of the project encloses financial details consisting estimated cost of the entire project and the entire amount needed to layout to run prosperous project-from materials to labour.
There are a number of budget templates available that allow you to monitor the expense of the budget. Some templates, for instance, Excel template also provide color indicators that will fill red when you are at risk.
Budget is the oxygen of your project so; to avoid unnecessary cost overruns you have you observe it precisely. Budget templates have made this job very convenient.
A project is a pile of a number of tasks and each of which requires resources- money. These tasks include hiring staff, buying raw materials, or contracting vendors all of them have to be paid and accounted for.
A budget template is a very vital tool to run any kind of business. But, various owners of small-scale businesses omit this important step of business management.
A human mind can forget many tiny details regarding budgeting that cause confusion but with the availability of a good budget template the process to manage and control costs become less time taking and complicated. You must check your actual costs against the planned ones on regular basis.
That’s why your budget should be accessible easily and updated corresponding to the changes in it. Luckily, there is no need to waste money on fancy software for it.
So, budget management is inevitable to run a successful project. To design a realistic cost baseline, the costs of all needs have to be calculated as closely as possible.
So, appropriate funds should be distributed and not cross the budget limits that might hurt the business badly. Conclusively, the cost estimates have to be very precise for these budget spreadsheets are very helpful.
The following are the key points how the cost and finance template helps your business;
- Expense, cash flow, and revenue can be tracked
- Gear up for usual business slowdowns
- Predict all expenditure from initiation till the end.
- Distribute the budgets to the areas that require the most capital
- Organize business purchases and investments
Monitoring Control Template
| Project Scope Statement Template | Project Gap Analysis Template | Product Roadmap Template Excel |
Monitoring templates set the standards of monitoring settings of your project and allow you to customize them according to the needs of the project and then implement them throughout the project.
Such templates can be edited and can be applied to more than one target. A monitoring plan describes that how the entire project will be observed. A monitoring template is target-oriented and can be implemented on the same types of targets.
For instance, you can design one template for the production database and another monitoring template for the test database.
This kind of template describes all the parameters of the project that are usually set to observe a target like the type of the target to which the template is applied and the metrics including metric extensions, metric collection schedules, thresholds, and corrective actions.
When the template is completely defined it can be implemented on the targets. This can be achieved manually or automatically with the aid of templates. By using specific metric settings, customized monitoring settings can be preserved.
Procurement Plan Template
| Project Resource Planning Template | Procurement Management Plan |
This is an annual document that highlights the services and the products procured by a Public Body from some external suppliers. A reliable procurement plan allows a procuring entity to outline the requirements to be procured from which source and when.
The main purpose of procurement plan is that it enables the planner to analyze if the expectations are pragmatic; specifically the expectations of the requesting bodies who mostly assume that their needs would be fulfilled on short notice and within that period the application of that particular procurement method allows;
- Initiation of a request and the development of various requirements like timing, quality, etc.
- Request acceptance and purchasing authority
- Proposal review
- Contract management responsibility and closure requirements
- Procurement process flowchart
Project Closure Template
| Project Scope Management Plan | Project Closure Report Template | Project Closure Documentation Template |
To check the performance, results, lessons gained and recommendations for the future a project closure document template is designed.
This template serves as the starting point for the synthesis of a detailed closure report. The closure template is very suitable for project managers engaged in a variety of tasks.
It allows the comparisons of the baselines for instance scheduling, deliverables, budget, and scope with original results, and also analyze team performance, communication management, and learning outcomes.
As all things attain a final stage similarly it is essential to set the completion criteria. In this way when the project reaches its end-stage, you can wrap up things and forward the right documents to the related people.
It is one of the phases of a project. Project managers strive hard to design and execute the project till it is finished which is also a crucial part of the project and require the same diligence.
At the closure point, all the documents have to be finalized then signed and final reports are delivered. That’s why the project closure template is critical you want to keep detailed documentation of the project.
Budget is an important factor at the end stage of the project and this is the point where you require a complete list of final costs to confirm that you achieved the budget goal. You will distribute payments to contractors, team members, and vendors, and other services.
Completion of one project is actually a new beginning for another so, one important role to close the completed project is to attain transition support in helping easy changeover.
To attain all the objectives planned at the beginning of the project will announce your success at the closure point.
Project Quality Template
| Project Quality Management Plan | Quality Control Plan Template | Project Action Plan Template | PERT Chart Template Excel |
| Multiple Project Tracking Template | Project Quality Management Plan |
A quality management plan of any project is a comprehensible set of documents and data to effectively handle the quality of the entire project right from its planning to its completion.
The fundamental base of constructing a Quality Management Plan is to portray how the quality will be maintained during the progression of the project.
It also includes the responsibilities of crew members to support quality and implement such practices to ensure the expected quality results.
The procedures for holding quality planning, quality control, quality assurance, and subsequent process betterment are also part of quality management.
All stakeholders should be acquainted with such procedures. The quality management plan aids the Director of the project to evaluate if the products being generated are according to acceptable quality standards.
Quality guidelines should be maintained for the below-mentioned items;
- Risk Management standards must be maintained
- Web publishing, records management, privacy, information security, etc.
- Business-related domain-driven standards
Reporting Template
| Multiple Project Status Report | Gantt Chart Template Excel |
A project report is a type of document generated for a company or team that makes sure that the tasks stay on right track. It also shows the progress of the project, roadblocks, and milestones.
They serve as an example that how reporting affects the project directly. Reporting templates save you from creating gaps in the information and highlights many project details.
The project report template keeps all the data regarding progress organized and consistent during the lifecycle of the project.
Reporting is the core element of the management process as it serves as the checklist to point errors. Among all the project documents, a project report is very necessary.
Along with the project plan, reporting also harbors a prominent role in justifying expenditure, tools, and team members or others.
There are two types of project reports one is an ongoing status report; this type of report would be required on a number of occasions during the complete lifecycle of a project and covers the whole progress.
The other type is the project completion report that is needed at the final level of the project and concludes everything.
Project Risk And Issue Template
In any project, risk and return are very important aspects. A project can’t be beneficial in the absence of a risk element. Project risk and issue template act as the remedy to manage the tasks concerning risks and uncertainties with the least time lag and keen attention.
Risk management is the science of handling risks, recognizing and analyzing the likelihood of risk and resultant impacts on the project along creating and implementing methods for responding to all the risks.
The risk and issue template assists to manage, record and handle various issues emerging from a project and also the risks related to it.
With the help of this template, the work becomes flexible, easy, and efficient. Risk and issue templates work as a tool for managing risks and help in the identification of problems
It is the main repository of all known risks and aid in determining their source and ranks them regarding their nature. It also includes the measures to counter and also treat such risks based on their intensity.
Employee Management Template
| Employee Corrective Action Plan | Employee Attendance Sheet Excel |
It is a completely editable and customizable template for controlling staff and workforce data for projects. The important information related to the staff can easily gather and maintain in the database type-designed template.
It is basically very useful for the Human Resource- HR departments and business owners to keep records of their employees and manage the workforce with greater efficiency.
Department managers can also trace employees and keep records of their salaries. Following are the main components of the staff management template:
- Departments
- Managers
- Employees
- Titles
- Salaries
There are also some fundamental principles as the employees have legal rights to privacy at the workplace about their personal lives. The employees should be informed timely before monitoring its reason and scope.
Activity monitoring allows the manager to be aware of employees’ actions during work time. All the information about staff like contact numbers, address or more organized at one place makes the access to them very easy by using employee management template that can be approached anytime and anywhere.