Project Standards
To ensure that quality is maintained throughout the project and to effectively manage all the documentation created throughout the project, configuration management is vitally important. Configuration management controls and tracks all documents and ensures the correctly authorised documents are being worked with, and the outdated documents are archived.
Key to the success of any project and to configuration management is the "sign-off" on agreed specifications. It is vitally important that Stakeholders are aware of this sign-off and comply with this requirement. This prevents scope creep and allows changes to be easily managed.
The following summarises it:
The convention of document version control is vital to maintain efficiency, and is incorporated within the document naming convention.
By following the process of version control, a Project Team member, and in fact anyone who understands the methodology, will always know what the latest document is and what document is the definitive version. This is vitally important in change control and prevents scope creep as it allows the Project Manager to review the original agreed requirements against what is actually occurring.
During the project life cycle, every mandatory project document should have a consistent naming convention applied, using the Project ID, standard document name, and the version (or in the case of weekly documents for project tracking, the date and sequential number of document).
This is so that every document can be uniquely identified at a glance, with defined version control.
Edinburgh Napier PMO creates a MS SharePoint Site (SPS) for all of the Projects to a standardised Template. The Project Manager's responsibility is to ensure that all Documents are uploaded to the Project SPS. The SPS has a structure for sub-folders, to enable consistent and logical location of mandatory documents.