Project Management consists of managing your project plan, achieving your project objectives, and delivering the intended project results to your users, customers and management. As a Project Manager, doing this effectively requires a disciplined project management approach using key project management documents, methods, and tools to guide your progress. What documents do you use for project management?
Important Project Management Documents
What are the typical project management documents that are used in project planning and execution? You might think the project plan is the first document but, before you plan the project you need to determine the scope by understanding the customer or user requirements, feasibility, and business case behind the project.
1. User Requirements & Project Assumptions
First thing when thinking of project management documents, what are the customer comments, stated and implied requirements, and project assumptions from the customer or management? The customer is the focus of the project so we need to understand what they need and document those requirements to ensure we focus on the customer.
Creating a baseline of your customer requirements helps to reduce “scope creep” or the addition of new requirements.
2. Feasibility Study
Next we need to build a business case to justify the project to management. A feasibility study is conducted to provide the data for the business case. Your feasibility study consists of industry research, financial costs, and the methods used, which provide the basis for your financial justification to management.
3. Business Case Justification
Your business case is the financial justification to management, which is derived from the feasibility study, user requirements and project assumptions.
4. Project Charter
The project charter is a statement of the basic problem faced by the user, the project’s goals, benefits, and a rough schedule of the major milestones.
5. Project Plan
The project charter lays out the major milestones and the project plan defines the detailed schedule, budget, resources, risks, assumptions, and roles & responsibilities for all stakeholders. Project plans basically define who does what by when and is one of the most important project management tools to any project. Keeping the project on track is important to keeping the project on budget!