DOCUMENTATION

Documentation is frequently an area of project work that is sacrificed to ensure that tasks are completed on time. This is especially true with engineering projects where the team are often not keen on writing documentation. Instead they would rather write thin, brief documents with the sole objective of being able to pass a quality audit. Part of the solution is for project managers to lead from the front from the start of the project. They need to demonstrate to the team that it is important to document accurately the work that has been completed. They need to explain clearly to the people involved that this documentation will be extremely important to those who have to maintain their work after the project has closed.

Getting the team focused on documentation is achieved by focusing their efforts on production early in the project process. This is one of the best ways to ensure it will be delivered in a timely fashion. This means not leaving the documentation until the last two or three months before the close of the project. It requires the team to build documentation production in from the start of the project work. Every work package should include work specific to documentation production. This should include specific deliveries associated with the production of documents. Each of these deliveries should be reviewed thoroughly before the documents are produced. The document review should not begin in earnest as part of the acceptance test. Instead it should be built into the production of the documentation. One method that helps to make sure of success is to involve those people who will have to maintain the outcome of the project. They should act as consultants and reviewers for the team member producing the work. They will be focused on ensuring that the documentation is of the right standard. Care should be taken however in ensuring that the project team remain the authors and owners of the work. Those maintaining the work can often be persuaded by the project team to write the documentation in place of the team member. Whilst this may be acceptable in some cases it is the project team who have the expert knowledge and who should therefore produce the written documentation.

At project closure you should give the customer a complete list of the documentation produced in support of the project. The list should show each of the documents, its title and a brief description. This list can be thought of as being the baseline configuration at the close of the project.