Essential Documents to Manage Your Projects

Speak to an experienced project manager, and they can give you a wealth of good advice on the does ' and don ' ts to Successfu Lly manage any project. All this advice, in a nutshell, would is about what to manage the people doing the work (which includes you too), to deliver Their results on time and to a budget when keeping the risk of failure to a minimum.

It really doesn ' t sound this difficult to does, but for some reason, many people think so project management is a massive Overhead to any project. I often hear phrases like "Oh, don't waste your time planning the work, just does it!" or "Why is you wasting your time WRI Ting the objectives, we all know what needs to be done! "

So the number one shortcut to successfully manage any project is:

"Understand the few essential brief documents you need to create and regularly review during the life of your project."

Document 1-the Project Charter

For example, on the beginning of your project, you need to create a one-page document called the Project Charter. This document would make sure, your customer understand the general goals of the project. After all, if you don ' t know where is going, how is going to get there? Remember, could also be your own customer!

To get this information, which has a meeting with your customer and ask the following 3 essential questions:

• What is the objectives of your project?
• What does want to produce or deliver?
• What's the business reason for doing this project?

After the meeting write the answers to these questions in your project charter and e-mail this back to your customer and as K them for their approval.

You've now successfully completed the most important aspect of any project, and that's to understand and agree with you R customer where is going with this project.

If you look at the time spent to achieve this important step in a project, you is looking at one or both meetings and abou T minutes to write up the information, say 2 hours with total for a small project. Not a big overhead at all.

Document 2-the Plan

You can now get on and create the second document call the plan. This would include a list of the work that needs to is done (also referred to as the scope of work), who would do it, the CO St and time to do the work, and finally a simple review of the What would go wrong, known as a risk assessment.

Document 3-the Progress Report

On a regular basis, anything from weekly to monthly, you need to create a progress report and deliver this to your custome R. They want to know "what's work is done" when "and how much is spent. They also want to know if you need their help to solve any problems. Your major challenge is just collecting this information so the can create Your regular progress report.

A Final thought

I have described the absolute minimum information you need to manage any project, and the key to success are understanding The few essential brief documents you need to create with this information-the project charter, the plan and the Progres S report. I hope it leads you to success in your projects.

Essential Documents to Manage Your Projects