Source: Unsplash
A whopping 91% of professionals admit to having project management challenges in their organizations. Most teams juggle between two and five projects simultaneously, on top of having to work with scattered files and broken communication.
You likely have strict project delivery deadlines, but your team cannot find important documents on time because they are lost in a pile of other irrelevant files. When a project breaks down due to improper management, frustration is the primary emotion, followed by burnout.
But when you know how to implement structured project management documentation, your team has better clarity and coordination.
We’ll learn about the types of documents used in a project management lifecycle and what digital tools you can use.
What is Project Documentation?
Project documentation is the collection of relevant project data, such as proposals, requirements, design, implementation, and budget. While there are dedicated project managers in every company, at some point, all team members work behind-the-scenes to deliver the project on time.
It’s all the more reason why the project documents need a specific storage space, which makes it easier for all team members to access.
Proper project management documentation helps you with:
- Better communication: All critical information in a single place gives stakeholders more control over the project scope and budget.
- Transparent decision-making: With access to all documents, teams can more easily understand the reasons behind your decisions.
- Tracking and on-time delivery: Every employee understands their responsibilities since they are able to monitor project details phase-by-phase.
Modern project management teams have learned to improve efficiency through reusable templates and requirements sheets. This way, even when a team member is switched to another department or leaves, the others are able to continue planning the project.
There are usually 5 phases of project management: Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closure. Each phase involves multiple document-handling tasks, which we’ll review later on in the article.
The Project Management Document List Every Team Should Have
Whether you’re a titled or an expected project manager, it’s good to know the fundamentals of documentation handling. Having separate project planning documents is key to completing every project phase without chaos.
Below are documents that are central to your project management workflows.
Project Documentation: 6 Essential Documents to Work With
For every project, you’ll come across six documents that direct the scope and completion.
- Project Requirements Document (PRD)
Think of the PRD as the base of your project management structure. It’s where you define your project’s purpose, features, functionality, and behavior.
A PRD frequently has:
- Objectives: What happens when you launch this product, and who benefits from it?
- Deliverables: All the assets you’re supposed to be handing over during the project completion.
- Acceptance criteria: A list of requirements a product must complete to satisfy the delivery.
- Constraints: Common bottlenecks that are withholding the team from completing delivery.
This document also has the technical aspects of the product you’re building, so stakeholders understand the product’s depth and core features.
- Project Plan Document
The project plan document acts as the roadmap and includes critical information like the:
- Goal,
- Timeline,
- Budget,
- Scope,
- Resource allocation.
This document helps align your team and stakeholders with the project goals. A Gantt Chart or product roadmap is an effective way to present these elements.
- Risk Management Document
Every project might likely face threats in its lifecycle. And the situation could worsen if you don’t know how to mitigate them. A risk management document helps you spot potential threats, understand how serious and frequent they are, and plan how to deal with them.
Consider these examples below:
- A budget risk assessment: It identifies cost overrun, scope creep, and market fluctuations to ensure financial safety.
- Schedule delays: An outline of probable project delays, such as documentation issues, missing team members, or delayed progress.
- Technical challenges: Major causes can include IT failure or data security risks.
- Communication Plan
As the name suggests, this document will help you decide when and how to share your project information with the stakeholders.
It reduces confusion amongst teams by:
- Defining how stakeholders communicate.
- Specifies which channels the project details will be shared on.
- What formats will the documents follow?
Streamlining project communication also reduces the chances of duplicate work.
- Change Request Log
Project management is generally volatile, where clients may need last-minute alterations to the product or system. A change request document helps the person in-charge to request, approve, and track project-related changes.
Always remember to update the project accordingly to help the team track changes if you decide to approve the request.
- Project Status Reports
It’s a weekly or monthly status report summarizing the:
- Project’s health,
- Progress,
- And risks.
The status report contains high-level information for increased transparency and proactive risk management.
For every project, you’ll be required to handle the above documents from start to finish. And any project management is only as good as the process it’s built on.
Let’s learn how to effectively handle documents during the project management lifecycle.
Best Practices to Handle Project Management Documents
These steps will come in handy as you prepare to tackle different projects:
- Standardize document templates: When project management documents share the same structure, it makes it easier for people to oversee the process.
- Centralize document location: Maintain all the documents in a single space. This way, everyone has access to it.
- Maintain version control: Use specific naming conventions like Projectname_V1_Date. It’s more readily available when you search for documents in a hurry.
- Assign document ownership: Make sure each document has a facilitator.
- Regularly update documents: Make changes as soon as you complete project milestones or approve change requests.
In addition to following good practices, you must use efficient project management tools to complete delivery on time.
Read on to find out about the reliable digital tools that help you reduce workload and the time spent on each phase.
Digital Tools That Help You Manage Project Files Efficiently
Project management documentation is vast and involves proposals, management plans, work breakdown structures, risk registers, and more. Most of these documents live on different platforms during each phase. For example, you could define project scope on Notion, execute projects and monitor them using Jira, and manage all documents using Google Drive.
Some project managers also use Google Docs, Confluence, or Word for project planning. You can then convert these files into PDF format and use them as the final document version for easier sharing.
The following are common tasks for teams that regularly work with PDF documents:
- Edit PDF files as the requirements change.
- Merge PDF documents to create a single standard file.
- Compress PDF files for easier sharing with the internal teams.
There are several online tools that make it easy to manage your everyday documents. For example, you can use PDFAid, Adobe Acrobat, Smallpdf, or Nitro PDF.
Organize Your Documents for Ongoing Success
When you treat project documentation management as a part of your everyday workflow, your chances of success are higher. Focus on making documents clear and well-structured so everyone on the team can use them easily.
Some ways to solidify the process are by using project templates, centralizing document storage, and regularly updating documents. More importantly, understand that using reliable digital tools is key to delivering strong project management results.