Are Artifacts Worth the Effort?

Faisal Shams is a business services consultant.

  Governance   Requirements Management   Strategy  

Assume you are a construction project manager. After a lengthy meeting with stakeholders to discuss project requirements, you immediately go to the construction site to address some observations with the engineering team. At the end of the day, you successfully complete both tasks seamlessly.

Now, the meeting and site visit have yielded results that need to be updated in the project artifacts. Do you have sufficient time to do so? Is it essential to update them, even though the outcomes have been effectively achieved and all participants are aware of them? Is there time to revisit and update these artifacts, especially given that it’s an ongoing process throughout the whole project's lifecycle?

Starting a new project doesn't just mean looking insightfully at the value it will deliver or the methodology to be implemented and other strategic matters. Beyond these vital aspects, all the project components are connected through a substantial set of artifacts that emerge from the project's initiation and continue to grow until its completion.

It's not merely a one-time editing, filling and storing in the project cabinet; rather, it requires constant reference, consultation, updating and possibly re-editing as if it were an entirely new document.

You can enumerate at least 70 artifacts that the project needs under the title "Commonly Used …

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