Author: Peter

Most project management methodologies contains documents and plans that cover the majority of all possible projects and scenarios and it’s a good thing to have a complete project management methodology.

However, a common problem occurs when project managers are forced by management or by their own ignorance  to prepare all these documents even though they are not necessary and perhaps doesn’t make any sense at all in their project.

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I’ve seen a project manager trying to prepare a procurement management plan even though the Project manager had nothing to procure in the project only because it was listed as a document to prepare in the project methodology.

A common solution to the problem is to create project categories where each category is defined based on project size, project complexity and some other factors. Only certain documents that makes sense for that category is required for the project to prepare.

I have created several “categorization models” for other companies as a consultant and also for my own project management methodology and a key factor is to use common sense and focus on the need to have documents.

More is not always better. Let me explain.

In radio transmission they measure something called signal to noise ratio and you want a strong signal and a low noise. The same theory applies for project plans and other project documentation e.g. project reports.

The signal is the essential “need to have” information where the noise is the “nice to have” and the “not want to have” information.

It’s likely that a 3 page project plan containing only essential need to have information will be read, understood and acted upon because it has a strong signal to noise ration.

On the other hand, a project plan with 3 pages of essential information scattered in a 100 page document with 97 pages of nice to have information will be put aside, forgotten and never acted upon because the signal to noise ratio is bad and no one have the neergy to read through the document.

Do the following:

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• Ask the following question about each document “Do i need this document or is it merely nice to have?”. The need to have documents becomes mandatory and the nice to have documents becomes optional.
• Then ask the following question for all the chapters in the mandatory documents “do I need this chapter or is it merely nice to have?”. All the need to have chapters becomes mandatory and all the nice to have chapters becomes optional.
• Then ask the following question about the optional (nice to have) documents “can I remove parts of this document because it doesn’t bring any real value whatsoever?

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You need to ask the above questions for each project category you have.

If you create an excel sheet to calculate a project category score you need to treat that score as a giudeline/recommendation about the project category and not a sa fact. Some common sense must be applied by the project sponsor together with the project manager when chosing the final project category.

I’ll post a simple prototype of an excel sheet that categorises projects in a future post.

What do you think abot this article? Please add any suggestions or comments in the comment field below.