I am mentoring a current "Scheduler" that is a personal friend and she is interested in moving into a Project Coordinator role and eventually on to Project Manger role in a few years. She asked a question that I have never had asked before "What are the core project documents that you need to create and in which order of creation do you create them during the planning phase". Interested to see how you all would answer this question. I have mostly created my documentation in the following order:
#1: Project Charter #2: Stakeholder Register #3: Scope Statement #4: Work Breakdown Structure (In MS Project) #5: Risk Management Plan #6: Resource Management Plan #7: Schedule Baseline (In MS Project) #8: Cost Baseline #9: Quality Management Plan #10: Communications Management Plan #11: Procurement Management Plan #12: Change Management Plan Saving Changes...
There is no sequence nor is there a mandatory list of PM outputs as this varies widely based on the project and organization's context.
PMBOK processes are iterative so there really is no sequential flow which is universally applicable.
Kiron
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1 reply by Kiyon Buckley
Feb 20, 2024 10:31 AM
Kiyon Buckley
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Thanks for the response. Putting PMBOK/PMI aside, have you seen some core documents that "most" projects have? Always good to have insight from PMs in different fields.
Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
The organization must define a governance process. The governance process will drive all related to project documentation creation. And it will be customized to project life cycle and solution delivery method that is a matter of governance too. For example, in a place where I worked on I was in charge to define this type of things and no matter the life cycle or method we have 5 documents as mandatory: business case (which is previous to project), requirements document, design document, solution validation document, organizational readiness document. Those documents help us to fulfill some requirements than SOX Controls.
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1 reply by Kiyon Buckley
Feb 20, 2024 10:34 AM
Kiyon Buckley
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Thank you for the response. That is a very interesting list of mandatory documents. Out of the last 5 organizations that I have worked with the following are some core documents that always seem to be the most prevalent: Business Case, Project Charter, Scope Statement, WBS, and Schedule Baseline.
There is no sequence nor is there a mandatory list of PM outputs as this varies widely based on the project and organization's context.
PMBOK processes are iterative so there really is no sequential flow which is universally applicable.
Kiron
Thanks for the response. Putting PMBOK/PMI aside, have you seen some core documents that "most" projects have? Always good to have insight from PMs in different fields.
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1 reply by Kiron Bondale
Feb 20, 2024 12:07 PM
Kiron Bondale
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It really depends on the project context.
In general you need "something" to authorize a project's existence whether that is a formal charter or an e-mail message from an appropriately authorized individual. You also need something to establish what you intend to do whether that is a full fledged PM Plan or just some of its subsidiary components. And you need to have something to track progress as well as things that come up - that could be a task list combined with a RAID log or a full fledged project schedule, issues log and so on. And likely there would need to be something at closeout - might be a formal comprehensive summary report or could just be an e-mail informing all stakeholders of the project's conclusion.
As you can see, there really is no single standard - you need to figure out what makes sense.
The organization must define a governance process. The governance process will drive all related to project documentation creation. And it will be customized to project life cycle and solution delivery method that is a matter of governance too. For example, in a place where I worked on I was in charge to define this type of things and no matter the life cycle or method we have 5 documents as mandatory: business case (which is previous to project), requirements document, design document, solution validation document, organizational readiness document. Those documents help us to fulfill some requirements than SOX Controls.
Thank you for the response. That is a very interesting list of mandatory documents. Out of the last 5 organizations that I have worked with the following are some core documents that always seem to be the most prevalent: Business Case, Project Charter, Scope Statement, WBS, and Schedule Baseline. Saving Changes...
Thanks for the response. Putting PMBOK/PMI aside, have you seen some core documents that "most" projects have? Always good to have insight from PMs in different fields.
It really depends on the project context.
In general you need "something" to authorize a project's existence whether that is a formal charter or an e-mail message from an appropriately authorized individual. You also need something to establish what you intend to do whether that is a full fledged PM Plan or just some of its subsidiary components. And you need to have something to track progress as well as things that come up - that could be a task list combined with a RAID log or a full fledged project schedule, issues log and so on. And likely there would need to be something at closeout - might be a formal comprehensive summary report or could just be an e-mail informing all stakeholders of the project's conclusion.
As you can see, there really is no single standard - you need to figure out what makes sense.
Kiyon,
Your 2nd list of documents looks much closer to a basic set of project documents but it varies greatly. Some of the items Sergio listed I would consider engineering artifacts, not PM. Items like change management plan may be existing organizational processes and do not change with respect to your project or may be unique. I can manage many projects with a PowerPoint that has 1 page for each document you mentioned and then backup material. Several PM tools act as one source for all the "documents" with reporting capabilities.
The document creation order also changes and is iterative. A basic flow would be authorization to go investigate (charter or equivalent), business case for more work although that may be already known and support the charter, a high level description of work (scope although that could be part of the charter or a higher layer of the WBS), a more detailed WBS that will change with time, and then time and cost is layered on top the WBS. Saving Changes...
