Standard Documentation

Is there such a things as Standard Project Documentation? I know different methodologies state that there should be x, y and z, but is there any standard format to these? … And should there be?

Most companies have a communications department, which designs templates and colour schemes for corporate literature, usually limited to external communications.  I have worked with guidelines for logos, colour schemes and fonts, but usually this have been for external documentation and website designs.

What is a PID

A PID is a Project Initiation Document and is created once the authorisation to initiate a project has been given.  The PID is the final result of the initiation phase of the project and describes the "what, why, who, how, where, when and how much" of the project.  This document is fairly extensive within the Prince2 Project Management Model and will incorporate many documents, such as the project brief, project scope, project definition and project plan as well as the strategy for the project in terms of communication, quality, configuration management, risk and issues.  More information on these individual topics can be found in the Prince2 book, so I will not go into detail here. 

It is the project managers role to produce the PID and pass it on to the project board for authorisation.  In reality the stakeholders, users and business analysts will need to be involved in producing much of the documentation. 

The PID is a constantly evolving document and remains important throughout the project life cycle.  The PID contains many documents/sections including the project plan, exception plans, risks/issues and therefore is updated throughout the project.  It remains a reference point to who is doing "what, when, how, why". 

Spend time keeping the PID updated and authorised. 

Standard Project Documentation

Is there such a things as Standard Project Documentation. I know different methodologies state that there should be x, y and z, but is there any standard format to these? … and should there be?

Most companies have a communications department, which designs templates and colour schemes for corporate literature, usually limited to external communications.  I have worked with guidelines for logos, colour schemes and fonts, but usually this has been for external documentation and website designs.

The Project Management Office has a role to perform in terms of providing some standard documentation, but I have found this is limited to Report formats and PowerPoint presentations.  For the last two corporations I have worked in, both of which have a PMO, there has not been any standard documentation for other project documents.  

I am a believer in simplification.  I feel that standard formatted documentation should be available and reused, such as reporting, RAID and Project Documents.  I would go one stage further and ensure that there is a library of standard documentation for all of my projects.  I do not just mean that there should be a font, colour scheme and logo, but I feel the content should be "standardised".  I feel that a new Project Manager should be able to pick up a template and have a baseline for their documentation.  For example, the Test Strategy should have a number of sub topics that would help the Project Managers ensure that all of the required information is captured, then the Stakeholders would read and understand each test Strategy and be able to compare on a Project by Project basis.

If a Senior Stakeholder is running many projects, it would be beneficial for them to understand the documentation they can expect and the content and purpose of each of these documents.  A further example could be for the Project Charter, which should have a standard format and content for all project, no matter how large or small.  The topics of content of the documents for every project will be the same for this document, however the content and length may be different.  

A good example of other standard documents would be the Risk Register.  In all of the companies I have worked for recently, there has not been a definitive standard for the RAID log.  This document is one of the most important, most used and updated documents in the Project Manager's Library.