These Papers Were Made For Working...

  Governance  

Have you ever been in a bind due to lack of documentation during a project? If you said "no," then count yourself as one of the fortunate few. However, let me also assure you that the odds are that a day will come when you will wish you had documentation.

It is easy for people to forget things over time. Different expectations evolve, and selective retention (where only things that benefit the other party are remembered) is the order of the day. Regardless, without formally documenting expectations and then managing them throughout the life of a project, an undesirable level of risk can enter into the equation.

So What?
You are probably now asking yourself this question. The "so what" in this case is that it is very important that the project manager and team store important correspondence in case it needs to be referred to during the project or if a legal case develops at some point:

"As risk mitigation decreases, the likelihood of litigation increases."

Proper documentation can serve to illustrate the life of a project in an objective fashion unfettered by the cruelties of time. The proposal, status reports and change requests all come together with other documentation to show how a project evolved over time. In some cases, the changes may be positive and welcome. In others, the changes may be detrimental and unavoidable. By documenting challenges, decisions …

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