Christian VelazquezBARA Process Lead| Cadena de Descuento BARAMonterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico
As PMs we face the constant struggle of keeping the documentation complete. However once you haver several concurrent projects, documentation can decrease in quality due to the time constraints.
How do you manage the documentation workload? Have you applied any tactic to thin the documentations steps and reduce the tiem dedicated to this step? Saving Changes...
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten AssociatesNew Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
We do everything automated and we have a department in PMO who is responsible for making sure the documents online are up to date.
Proper Documentation is an integral part of any successful organization.
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1 reply by Christian Velazquez
Feb 09, 2017 1:15 PM
Christian Velazquez
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Thank you Rami for your input, sadly our department is not big enough to have resources assigned for documentation.
Saving Changes...
Wade HarshmanScrum Master| GDITIndianapolis, In, United States
It's a great question, Christian. As project managers, we're notorious for over-documenting our projects and creating work that adds no value (waste). Admitting we have a problem is the first step to finding a solution. Aside from our reputation, though, we know that this workload is often given TO us.
Ideally, your communication plan would offer some guidance on which documents are important and why they are important, how frequently they should be updated, who is responsible to keep them up to date, and how they should be shared. I've been in organizations where we created documentation simply because we had always done it that way, but no one could explain why it was required. Because no one could explain the origins of a documentation requirement, everyone was too afraid to stop creating these documents.
Process improvement specialists would tell you to stop creating these documents and see if anyone notices. Saving Changes...
Shawn RobisonProgram Manager| Johnson & JohnsonFort Worth, Tx, United States
I agree with with Wade. Far too often project documentation requirements are not really examined. They're simply inherited from a boiler plate set of documentation. I think it's important in project planning to actually discuss documentation that is required for that specific project. Simply asking the question "Why is this needed?" will often thin out the initial list.
I've seen far too many projects with voluminous documentation which delivered no value to the project manager, stakeholders or the team. Figure out what is required to achieve success and just do that. Saving Changes...
Christian VelazquezBARA Process Lead| Cadena de Descuento BARAMonterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico
Jan 31, 2017 4:14 PM
Replying to Maria Isabel Martin Serrano
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To make it more efficient, better tools.
To thin it, ask your PMO (office) and agree with your Sponsor, project team and stakeholders.
Thank you Maria for your input! Saving Changes...
Christian VelazquezBARA Process Lead| Cadena de Descuento BARAMonterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico
Jan 31, 2017 7:27 PM
Replying to Rami Kaibni
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We do everything automated and we have a department in PMO who is responsible for making sure the documents online are up to date.
Proper Documentation is an integral part of any successful organization.
Thank you Rami for your input, sadly our department is not big enough to have resources assigned for documentation. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
To be successful you have to understand that documentation is a component inside Configuration Management environment. When you do that then you have the rist step to be successful to all related to documentation. After that said, the amount and type of documentation will depends on your project life cycle and governance requirements. As an umbrella for all these somebody you define (inside the PMO, the PM, or somebody) must work on to sell the idea about docummentation is a critical component on project success if you define it. Saving Changes...
Satish SharmaCertified SAP S4Hana 1909 Financials Expert| FreelanceNew Delhi, India
Project documents are not scriptures as the followers may read them as a matter of faith, rather they are objective documents to record various program specifications, functional specifications, process flows and business process documentations, these kind of documentation can not be avoided at all, what can be done in order to streamline and lean the process of updating them so unnecessary waste of time in formatting and writing redundant texts can be minimised, is to standardised them into templates, this is one time job and there are people available in any resource repository to allocate this task in the project preparation phase, a word of caution though, this kind of facilitation is possible in standardised software development or ERP implementation projects very easily. Saving Changes...
Absolutely, using a lean processes and templates but using what is needed: one page project charter, schedule, risk and issue log and meeting notes. Build other templates if needed. Saving Changes...
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