Project Management Documents

In a large project like your SW development:

Early development:
- Charter at the beginning to authorize work of a defined scope.
- Business case to justify the project and steer the decisions (including sometimes termination).
- High level work statement (about WBS level 3 to 4) used to better define the scope and develop the SOW
- KPIs like a kiveat/radar plot to strike an estimated performance baseline and use for monitoring change activity

Detailed development after project launched:
- Detailed statement of work broken out at the individual group level. This is for budget and schedule development among other things.
- Integrated schedule generated from the work statement
- Some type of EVM tracking even if not actually CPI and SPI
- Risk register with risk handling plans
- Some type of change management summary. (potentials, in-work, and incorporated)

Execution phase. This is often a "deck" of PowerPoint slides with progress in various areas but it is to maintain visibility of things like cost, schedule, risks, etc. This is a high level roll up of how the detailed plans are doing. There's often both ongoing performance used to manage the activities and major milestone reviews like PDR and CDR reviewed with internal and external stakeholders.

Closure phase:
- Some type of evidence of completion, such as the closure of all verification and certification activities.
- Follow on activities, like if there are bug fix type activities, planned future enhancements, etc.
- Lessons learned
- After action reviews (things we need to go and figure out what went wrong)

I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but all are tailored to the needs of an individual project. Part of the trick is not spending all your time managing a bunch of documents so you still have time to work on actual planning and execution. On really big projects, I'll have teams of PMs with different specialties managing different subject matter.

Keith, you are the man. I was really needing something like what you provided. Since I was tossed into this right in the middle, (and because I'm new), I didn't know what I needed to draw up as PM. This really bothered me because I always aim to give 110% to whatever job I'm working on... and I couldn't!

Yeah, there is a lot of info out on the net, but it's usually written by folks that have been in PM for a while, and therefore, aren't thinking with the mind of a noob. I've seen mention of Project Charters, Business cases, Project Scope, etc, but nothing has said what order they need to happen and who creates these documents. At first I thought a PM would do it, but the more I searched, the more confused I became.

We are facing another huge project, and the info you provided here helps me understand what needs to happen... IN THE BEGINNING going forward, but also what boxes I need to check in the current project.

Thanks a lot. :)