The following article is part of the self-preparation for the modern BVOP® Project Management Certification program.
Poor quality documentation may cause waste in different areas of project delivery, product management, and development, such as:
- Time waste
- Costs waste
- Development waste
- Delivery and implementation waste
Time and costs wastes are usually obvious and logical, but development and delivery waste is a topic that needs attention.
Poor documentation is considered to be:
- Not well readable
- Contains very long content that is not helpful and requires a lot of time for processing
- Outdated and misleading
- Not related to the project needs
- Missing
Poor documentation may lead to not needed or incorrect development outcomes. If development teams do not fully understand the documentation or if it is confusing, they may spend time developing unrequired or incorrect parts of the product. It can also be a cause of a poorly executed project or an inaccurate product as a whole.
Documentation management also includes creating, maintaining, requesting and sharing documentation intended for research, development, support, marketing, and for all other teams, departments, and parties involved in the project, and product.
The BVOPM office facilitates and supports documentation practices, as well as evaluate them based on business value and status.
Comments from the BVOP™ community
Anastasiya Vodianova
I have never met any tips and recommendations on document quality management other project management teachings.
Methodology without processes does not help. And delivering the right and accurate documentation is really a process that deserves to be highlighted and emphasized in all projects.
If the documentation does not help teams or customers, it blocks them. I dare say that a project without quality documentation is failing. You will not see this in any other project management trend, but BVOP highlights and imposes this obvious fact that no one dares to talk about.
I recommend that you seek quality documentation and processes related to the documentation with high attention. Check facts. Do not waste time. And remember the saying that little can be more.
- Previous article Documentation management
