Project & PMO Manager | Research & Enterprise Mentor| GFB HoldingSouth America, Brazil
A good approach involves a combination of strategy and tools. While a simple shared drive and Power BI might work for internal documents, adapting to client standards is essential for external projects. The challenge you're facing, where clients create their own procedures and standards for storage, is common. The key is to proactively address this. Instead of waiting for them to dictate terms, offer a suggested documentation management plan upfront, based on best practices and tailored to common client needs. For tools, while a shared drive is a basic option, consider more robust solutions like SharePoint, Confluence, or dedicated document management systems (DMS) like M-Files or DocuWare. These offer features like version control, access control, and metadata tagging, which are invaluable for larger projects. If client-specific tools are required, integrate with them as best as possible. Even then, maintain a parallel, well-structured internal system for your own team's efficiency. No single tool is universally the "best," but choosing one that facilitates organization, collaboration, and version control is paramount.
It starts by understanding what information is needed to support delivery & control objectives and what policies and standards are in place regarding this. Then, ideally the team can look at the nature of their work and what would help them best and come up with a set of decisions regarding information capture.
In some cases, it could be traditional standalone documents captured in a folder structure, in others information in a document management system, or information captured in online collaborative tools (e.g. Wikis). And, if the team is small and co-located with stakeholders, a white board and sticky notes might suffice.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
You will find a good guide inside the IEEE standard related to Configuration Management. This is about the process and techniques. About the tool there are a lot of different posibilities. I used and implemented Knowledge Management systems (where system is not software system) as the tool and in the last 5 years we convined it with generative AI. Saving Changes...
Project Manager| AWR Development (BD) Ltd. Cox's Bazer , Bangladesh
I can speak from my own experience that in projects where I have appointed people as document controllers, the documents have taken a good shape by the end of the project. But where there is no document controller, the matter is different. All the incoming and outgoing of the project should be through the document controller. And this is the most essential tool Saving Changes...
My personal favorite is by replacing documents with models.
When your information is stored in federated documents, that information must often be copied into other systems for business consumption. That can create significant hidden overhead costs to combine data from different documents and opens the door for errors.
If the information is instead structured in a standard structured format that may be referenced by other business systems, now you can create a single source of truth. For example, if your material quantities and vendors are listed in a document and engineering makes a change, having that information linked can enable automatic updates to purchase orders. If a delivery date changes, that can automatically feed the master schedule.
That approach is referred to as Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) which is a structured way to create linked models. One of the first steps is converting stand-alone documents into structured forms where the critical information is in a known location and common format enabling linkage to other forms/models. Saving Changes...
Earlier we used to have it on MS Sharepoint, It's a good tool to store project documentaiton. Now we have shifted to JIRA/Confluence. You can explore these options:
Nuclino
Hubspot
GitHub
MarkdownPad
ProProfs
Read the Docs
Confluence and Notion are very popular in my circles. Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Effective documentation management begins with a clear understanding of the information required to support both delivery and control objectives.
This includes compliance with organizational policies, governance expectations, and stakeholder communication needs.
From there, the team should assess the nature of the work: Is it highly regulated or fast-paced? Predictable or adaptive? Cross-functional or localized?
These answers inform the documentation strategy.
In predictive projects, a structured document hierarchy in a controlled repository (e.g., SharePoint, Documentum) ensures traceability and compliance.
In agile or hybrid setups, documentation is lighter, embedded in the workflow, and often captured in collaborative platforms like Confluence or integrated into backlog tools (e.g., Jira).
In small or co-located teams, even analog methods (whiteboards, sticky notes) can be effective — provided there’s a mechanism for capturing and maintaining knowledge over time.
Ultimately, documentation is not about volume — it’s about fitness for purpose.
It should support decision-making, foster alignment, and ensure continuity, without becoming an administrative burden.
The goal is to document what matters, when it matters, in a way that serves both the present and the future of the project.
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