Project Management Documentation Samples

This blog is a series from the original blog post where we discussed how you could improve the conversion rate by preparing a good proposal document. The link to the original blog is mentioned here on medium

https://medium.com/peritos-solutions/project-documentation-and-why-do-we-discuss-documentation-ea767ca8c19e

In this blog, we discuss the other documentation samples which can help you to manage your project effectively. IN this blog we share some of our best practices to create these documents and some samples which can be used to getting started

These are the documents which we are going to discuss.

  • Functional Discussion document or Business requirement document
  • Functional Design Document
  • Technical Design Document
  • KT Plan
  • User training documents
  • Functional discussion document sections:

What it should have: It should capture all detailed discussions which you have had with your client till date. This is the consolidated document which defines why a particular solution was selected and addresses any issues which the management or client may have.

  1. Business problem: Clearly state the purpose of the project and the high-level goal you are trying to achieve
    1. Analysis
    2. Business challenge
    3. Business opportunity
  2. Questions and Concerns: Document the business questions that were asked during the initial design or scope discussions and their requisite answers
  3. Available options: Option 1/ Option 2
  • Description
  • Benefit
  • Cost
  • Risk
  • Limitation
  • Assumptions
  1. Appropriate solution: Clearly state why this particular solution was chosen over others and why you recommend it
  2. Deliverables: Set a clearly defined set of deliverables and divide the project into phases
  3. Project Organization:
    • Customers
    • Stakeholders Matrix
    • Roles
    • Resource Plan
    • Financial Plan
    • Communication Plan
  4. Project Consideration
    • Risks
    • Issues
    • Assumptions
    • Backups / Timeout / Outages
  5. Testing: Details about the test plan, clearly define the responsibilities of the test manager, the client as well as any other relevant details.
  6. Appendix

Functional Design Document:

After the initial discussion and design workshops which you may have had with the client, it is essential to now focus on the solution offering. This is a much-condensed version of the AS-IS solution and it may require you to update it in various versions.

  1. DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
    • Document Status
    • Revision History
    • Business Input and Signoff
  2. PROJECT SUMMARY
    • Project Scope
    • Project Objectives
    • Project Deliverables
  3. OVERVIEW
    • Purpose
    • Audience
    • Assumptions
    • Business Process Solution
  4. High Level Process Overview
    • Detailed Process Steps
    • Future State Business Process
    • Process Overview

Technical Design Document:

Now one of the most important document is the technical design document. I am not including any specific template for this one as it depends a lot on the programming language that you’ll use.

In the case at hand, we have delivered projects in SAP, JavaScript, and C#. We ensure the basic sketch of the document remains as below. One important thing to note is the fact that the code snippet should always be included. The document should holistically represent what you did and anyone who was not a part of the project should be able to read and understand from the document that the project is about and what is the expected project approach and deliverables

  • OVERVIEW
  • Purpose
  • Audience
  • Assumptions
  • Code logic
  • Code Snippet
  • Object Details
  • Monitoring / Batch Job etc involved
  • Code Snippet

KT Plan

A matrix which shows what all KT you plan to cover and who are it’s intended audience. Attached is one of the KT plan I created. It includes

  • Objective Sessions
  • Attendees
  • Room
  • Proposed Date, Time and Location
  • Pre-Requisites
  • Status

User training documents

A sample training document is as attached. A right set of the document should consist of

  • Step by Step Diagram
  • Screenshots from the system
  • A log which captures the test result

With these set of documents you should be able to execute and deliver a project successfully end to end, thereby gaining your client confidence by projecting your methodological approach.The best practice of documentation depends on what kind of project you are in. An implementation project which has a UI may need a UX design approach whereas a backend project may not require any UI to be implemented so you can skip that.

Most of these documents need to be tweaked according to your project technical skills being used and your clients requirement but these documents should give a good starting point to be used in the project

Refer this link to download the sample document

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