Doing Implementation Documentation Right

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Life Hack 101: Doing Implementation
Documentation Right
Sarah Huhner
Senior Consultant
Demand-Driven Matters Blog Contributor
Demand-Driven Matters blog post

The Who, When, What and Where for a
Solid Project Doc Strategy
Imagine if your most important photos—your child’s first
birthday party, the day you brought home your new dog,
that awesome vacation in Europe—were all lost forever.
Your computer fell into the bathtub or the hard drive was
wiped by an electrical storm, and you didn’t back up your
drive. Don’t let this happen to your project documentation.

Keep it accessible and functional for the life of your
project as well as secure for future use, whether
it’s for new end users, future implementations, or
even project auditors.
Consider the following and you will be on your way
to doing documentation right:

You’ll want to figure out the Four W’s-
Who, When, What, Where

Who needs access and what level of access do they
need? Do they have authority to sign off on documents,
or are they just a viewer? Someone who can edit
documents and share them?
Define a few user groups according to their necessary
level of editing rights.
Who?

Use categories such as content Viewers, Team Members
(creating and posting documentation) and
Administrators. Also, be sure to get all individuals setup
with a secure login so that they can access the
information.
Line up someone to be in charge of setting up and
allowing new access requests for others. Be sure to
designate someone that will be in charge of overall
organization and version clean-up within the space.

Sometimes multiple drafts of one document can get
overwhelming, so you’ll want to be sure someone is
tidying up along the way so that old versions aren’t
confused with the latest drafts.

Now we’ll really need a good project tool with all of the built-in
capabilities you need to ensure security, version control and ease of
use. If the client company uses a Windows-based authentication
system, this will work well with a number of collaboration tools, such as
Microsoft® SharePoint or JIRA Confluence.
These tools also make it possible for contractors, like partner company
team members, to have project-specific login credentials.
What?

Selecting a collaboration tool within the overall corporate IT strategy
also means that the platform is supported and that retention policies
are already in place for later access.
Commonly, these collaboration tools are accessible via a secure Cloud
for safe remote access and allow you much more functionality than just
an electronic “file cabinet.”

As for the “what” to store, I recommend
a certain baseline to get started, then
some guidelines to execute and finalize
the document repository:

• Blank, clean versions of all required deliverables
• Meeting minutes from any meeting where decisions are made and
action items assigned
• Project management documentation (such as RACI, team contact
list, charter, statement of work)
• One final version of all required deliverables in a folder marked
“Final Deliverables”
• PDFs of final deliverables with written sign-offs from required
approvers (each page initialed and signed on the approval page)
• Archive folders of older versions of deliverables or other documents

When should you set up the collaboration software or a documentation
repository? It’s prudent to do this as far in advance of the project as possible
so that pre-project kick-off communications or documentation can be posted
to have an effective Day 1. Many companies have tools that they use to
ensure a current version of the very first documentation. Dangerous gaps can
form that leave crucial decisions out of the paper trail.
When?

You don’t have to have the entire organizational structure of the project
down before you build your platform. This is just an address for
everyone to visit and build from as you go along.
Don’t Worry

You’ll need a location that is accessible to both the client and the
partner team. If you host on your internal network, you might get into
proprietary issues for client-side devices—and your partner team
might not have the access they need. Work out any remote login
logistics prior to the project start date.
Where?

I have seen personal emails between project team members
disappear or cause serious problems in a project. Your “where”
must definitely not rely solely on one-to-one emails that
contain any project information that’s crucial to decisions or
outcomes—basically, ask your team to add all necessary
communications and information to the project collaboration
space. Make it all public knowledge so the private email
accounts of your project won’t leave gaps in your project
depository.
The Email Error

Having a great place—a “where” that allows you to take
action based on the most recent decisions—allows you
to trust that your project documents represent all of the
deliverables you need to track during the project and
ensure that they’re not lost at the end of the line.

One version of the truth
You can tell that the overarching rules for project
documentation are visibility and veracity. You need one
version of the truth, for the right people, at the very
beginning of a project and beyond.

Sarah takes a customer-focused and results-driven approach to
project management and demand-driven manufacturing systems
implementation. With hundreds of projects under her belt, Sarah is
fearless when it comes to challenging the status quo and delving into
the details to ensure an optimal user experience. As such, her posts
reflect tips and best practice advice for managing people and
processes through projects - and getting the most out of your systems.
Sarah Huhner

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Doing Implementation Documentation Right

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