Are You Documenting Smartly?
From the Voices on Project Management Blog
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Date
by Christian Bisson, PMP
Documentation—at least on IT projects—is one of those great project challenges. Documenting everything (and then keeping it updated) can be tedious, and requires a lot of time and discipline. But documenting nothing can leave people lost as a project evolves.
Like many things in life, balance is everything. Documentation doesn’t need to be a pain. It just needs to be relevant, easy to find and reliable.
Relevant
Documents can easily (and quickly) become obsolete, therefore it’s important to limit documentation to the information that can help the team save time and avoid errors. Stick to the most important elements, such as project scope, important links, FAQs, key decisions, approvals, etc.
Easy to Find
If information is scattered between emails, a server, a computer and a filing cabinet, chances are team members will skip looking for it and simply ask around (most likely starting with the project manager) to find what they’re looking for.
There are several software options out there today that are great for storing and organizing documentation, like Google Drive or Confluence (part of the Atlassian suite). Each allows you to consolidate documentation in one spot and provides access to simultaneous editing and commentating features.
Reliable
If you follow the first two tips, you should only have to maintain a limited amount of information in one easy-to-find location. This is essential because documentation that is not updated can have negative consequences on your project. It can mislead team members and accidentally force them into working off of outdated information.
Where do you store your important project documents? How do you ensure they are relevant and reliable? Share below!
Posted
by
Christian Bisson
on: April 07, 2017 12:20 PM |
Permalink
Comments (22)
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Rami Kaibni
Community Champion
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten Associates
New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Christian, very interesting post and points. Very True.
Naomi Caietti
Senior Project Manager | ePMO | Higher Education | Healthcare & IT| Linkedin.com/In/NaomiCaietti
Yes, scaled to fit the right size project too! Thanks.
Nian Rasheed
Project Manager| Asiacell Telecom Co./ Kurdistan Region/ Iraq
Sulaimani, Iraq-Kurdistan Region, Iraq
Thank you for your feedback.
Naomi, that's also another great tip, a small project of short duration will need require much documentation compared to a project that can last a few years.
Regards.
Nasrullah Mohammed
Portfolio Manager| Advanced Electronics Company
Riyadh, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Great post Christian. Thanks
Drew Craig
Sr. Agile & Product Coach| Vanguard
Philadelphia, Pa, United States
This is really an important and larger discussion. We are referring to Knowledge Management and taxonomy. With regards to project artifacts, there are different types of content - documentation and discussions. There is also authoritative and non-authoritative content.
Dependent on the initiative, we may utilize our social platform, JIVE, similar to Confluence, to socialize around content, or manage the entire project through a SharePoint project site to centralize all project related details; schedule, artifacts, discussions, risks, issues, etc. We also use harmon.ie to easily save email communications to the projects artifacts directory.
The overall intent is to maintain information around a particular initiative in one central, easy to find, location - tacit to explicit. The old 'hit by a bus' analogy.
The right information to the right people at the right time in the right context.
Karthik T
Senior Engineering Manager| Nike
Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Great points, thanks for sharing.
Ripal Shah
Project Manager| ITS Services LLC
Ardsley, Ny, United States
All project related document is very important. Even if you keep record of all the document as lessons learned - important aspect is analogous approach of project planning. I would suggest maintain all the document with -- ID like project ID, Doc. type ID, Version ID, Year and Month ....
Prachi Shah
Actively looking for Job in Project Management
Lancaster, Ma, United States
Great Points. Like the suggestions given by Ripal Shah. Like Sharepoint; we can allow to enter the Version ID, year and month, Now a days, no doubt lot of tools are readily available in the market which can hold all the versions but Name and Project ID to the file make a big difference. Thank you for sharing.
Jorge Espinoza
Cybersecurity Lead| Growth Acceleration Partners
Heredia, Costa Rica
MS SharePoint is an option. its versioning capability is very helpful.
Vincent Guerard
Coach - Trainer - Speaker - Advisor| Freelance
Mont-Royal, Quebec, Canada
Documentation is more important than we think.
To make it more useful taxonomy is key
Thanks
I agree sharepoint is excellent for sharing amongst a team and for the versioning capbility.
Good Post.
Although we think we are doing the right things, these posts are allways good to remind us how to keep on the right track
Good Post.
Although we think we are doing the right things, these posts are allways good to remind us how to keep on the right track
Luigi BELLI
Project Manager, Consultant, Author| CENTURICAL
Bruxelles, Belgium
In IT projects I suggest using JIRA and a Wiki while asking team mates to write user stories and document operational steps in Wiki pages (from scope to quality checklists and lessons learned). Versioning and comments are built-in and they display nicely in any device.
Hi Luigi,
JIRA and it's partner "Confluence" from the Atlessian suite are indeed a good duo, I currently couldn't live without them!
Cheers.
Stéphane Parent
Self Employed / Semi-retired| Leader Maker
Prince Edward Island, Canada
I've been deliberately using Confluence for my project management information system.
MEGAN OMalley
PM III| Oatey Company
North Ridgeville, Oh, United States
Very to the point. While my organization doesn't have Confluence, we use an online project management tool where I have requested a discussion group by project and area to keep all notes. I'm relying on MicroSoft Word.
Every project gets a meeting minutes and agendas document, and it builds week-to-week.
Decisions are documented to avoid re-creating a decision or trying to recall why a decision was made.
Outstanding issues are documented to ensure they're followed through on.
Everything gets archived at the project close on Box.com where its easily accessed by anyone in the organization. Documentation is important!
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