Published on June 11, 2014
I have been frequently asked questions about effectiveness of project documentations by many people who are involved and impacted in process documentations in one or the other way. This is also a brainstorming question for small to midsize companies putting ample amount of efforts in setting up right processes in place.
I would like to categorize this topic in following 6 sections:
1. Reason for documentation
Don’t just start creating documentations with unnecessary enthusiasm during project kick-off or process establishment.
Think for the Right, Precise, Focused and Long term advantages for your team and client first. Beauty is not in presenting long list of documents to the team but to derive effective documentation scope. Documents you are deciding to go with should bring scope clarity, highlight hidden challenges, limitations and clear long term vision of your ultimate goal.
Objective is to effectively utilize the time of your assignment. Recheck are you able to achieve this target?
Archiving documents after project completion is the most common scenario. If this is the case, you are going to make same mistakes in future. And if so, expecting changes is a myth. Keep the vision of revisiting your processes implementations after your project / milestone completion, identify improvement areas and work towards them. Changes will not show results overnight but each step taken based on learning will bring measurable impact in a longer run.
2. Time required for documentation
Measure creation vs. consumption time.
Your efforts should bring benefits in terms of organizational growth, project success, team and client satisfaction, efficiency and utilization growth. To be on progressive path, make sure time spent is less than the time effectively utilized on all these factors. Spend time in deciding how to create the documentation faster, easier to find, use and apply.
3. Sequence of document creation phase in development life cycle
The best sequence of documentation creation is during requirement gathering phase or sprint planning depending on the execution model.
4. Maintain and Update
Era of freezing the scope and delivering the product no longer exist. The same is true for process establishment in an organization. Change is only constant and it adds flavor of quality improvements which is in direct proportion of progress. If documents don’t stay updated, efforts put in creating those is zero. Smartness is in turning your efforts into success stories so get the most out of it!
5. Effectiveness of documentation for your scope
Are you really writing useful or just adding one more to the garbage? Documents must be easy to understand, easy to find required details and bring value to the client and the team. An effective document is the document that never resides in one hidden corner of your document space but frequently referred by related audience.
6. Utilization of learning of documentation processes in next projects
This is the area where there is less focus seen compared to other areas. But if you consider long term growth, vertical scaling and learning from mistakes then your past learning can be one of the best teachers for you stepping towards improvements.
Initiate case study of 5 past assignments of different nature, summarize lessons learnt out of them, do brainstorming with your senior management, come up with focused areas of improvements, decide priorities and start putting them into practice accordingly in your next projects.
So overall, don’t drag yourself with traditional routines but think simple and deep, act smart and efficient and conclude confidently with vision to bring positive change…
Enjoy Process Documentation. It’s not scary!!
