Discover top highly recommend project management documentation templates, tools, and techniques to handle a project professionally and cost-effectively. Here, we discuss phases of project management lifecycle, and project management documentation templates which includes, Project Initiation, Project Planning, Project Execution, Project Tracking, Project action plan, Project Charter, RACI Matrix, Work breakdown structure, Risk management plan, Issue log, Change request management, Communication planning, Scheduling, Root cause analysis, Procurement, Quality Management & Project closure.

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Project Management Documentation

Project management documentation is the elaborate process of preparing, categorizing and storing formal documents for a project throughout a project lifecycle. These documents form an elaborate repository of project activities, strategies as well outcomes, ensuring that every stakeholder gets a clear bird’s eye-view on the why (goals), when (timelines) and who(progression/responsibility mapping).

It is composed of the project charter, project plan, scope statement, risk plan, budget plan, change plan, schedule and others.

A project charter includes details of a problem the project intends to solve or an idea that it will bring into existence, and specifies what benefit should be derived from a project. A Project Charter is how every BI endeavor starts; it describes “What does this Business Intelligence Project do?”.

Project Plan: The project plan describes the steps, resources and timeline necessary to fulfill said goals; including task assignments and allocation of resources.

The scope statement goes into more detail about what the project deliverables are and how they will be produced. This creates well-defined boundaries so as to avoid scope creep by spelling out what is and isn’t in-scope for the project.

The project schedule is a visual representation of the tasks and milestones required to complete your project with time frames put on deadlines, dependencies that need to be completed in tandem for accuracy and an overall way we must comply with or go out-of-bounds.

Other essential project documents consist of risk management plans, communication plan, quality management.

Risk management plan – listing initial project risks and who is responsible for managing them.

The communication plan explains how different information will be communicated to the stakeholders, identifying how and when it will take place.

The quality management plan ensures project deliverables will conform to their baseline and meet the necessary standards you set earlier.

Other important documents such as minutes of the meeting, project status reports and change logs.

A minute is the record of solutions and initiatives taken as a result during project meeting.

Project Status Report – They are brief reports that provide information on the work progress, any hurdles and delays.

Change log records any changes made to project scope, schedule and resources.

A Effective project management documentation encourages transparency, accountability and creates a collaborative working environment among team members. It aids as a reference during the entire project lifecycle to better set expectations for how it will maintain and finish successful projects.

These PM documents & templates are necessary for regular use in project management documentation.

If you are making a PM document, this is easy to start and create templates. Usually, the most challenging part is to make the exact thing that you looked at.

Here are some of the templates with different categories:

Project Management Documents & Templates

Business Case

To help stakeholders make informed decisions, it explains why a project is necessary, sets out the potential benefits scomes, costs, risks.

Acceptance Criteria

This lays down the conditions required for a project or product to be accepted by the client, stakeholders or project management. It provides them with an objective basis from which they can track their progress in meeting these conditions through time and compare it later against actual results achieved once the project/research lies under way. Well defined acceptance criteria can avoid disputes at delivery time because both parties know what standard is expected.

Project Brief

The background and purpose of a project are described succinctly, as are its objectives and scope. The stakeholder perspective is included in this phase, so even though you may not feel capable of managing such a large scope it helps help to remind if stakeholders have been noticed who should receive benefits for one or another part of what you’ll produce.

Reference within the project lifecycle, some of those definitions may then grow past their initial concept and become more permanent fixtures; while others will change over years or even decades until we get altogether new ones altogether related to changing fashions in engineering techniques, test equipment use customs etc, which cause significant problems such as if allowed to continue. (Note: Project brief is used in Prince2 methodology)

Project Deliverable

This refers to the outputs of project execution, which may be either tangible or intangible and must still be delivered to a customer or sponsor.

Initiation Document (PID)

This is the sum of all documents produced at the project initiation stage, which provides a base for planning and executing processes.

Project Manager

A person who is responsible for overseeing and directing a project or projects, from conception through realization to completion.

Project Proposal

A document put forward to potential sponsors or clients, detailing the problem, how it proposes to solve this and what the outcome of that particular solution should be.

Project Charter

The purpose of a project charter is to define the project mission, scope, goals, objectives, resources, expected outcomes, and stakeholders. basically, it tells us why we are launching this project.

Project Assessment

Evaluates various aspects of the project, including performance, compliance with specifications, and overall project health.

Scope Statement

This defines the project’s scope, objectives, deliverables and boundaries in a clear manner that provides guide to what is included and excluded within the limits of this project are from each other (and sometimes even neighboring ones).

Organization Chart

This is a diagram which demonstrates the comparative ranking of project team members and their roles, aiding communication and organization.

Initial Resource Plan

This provides a list of the resources required for a project, which may include personnel, equipment and materials and is invaluable for budgeting off-line if you will.

Feasibility Study

A Statistical data of a proposed project or system, looking at its technical, economic and legal aspects.

Kickoff Meeting

Marks the official beginning of a project, where stakeholders gather together to review project objectives and expectations -among other things.

Approval Workflow

This defines the processes by which project deliverables and decisions move for review and authorization by authorized stakeholders.

Initial Project Risk

This involves identifying any potential risks at the outset of a project, which allows time for proactive risk management strategies rather than just reacting when it too late.

Project Management Plan

This refers to core planning for project management. This refers to creating the whole project plan that includes project tasking, scheduling, budgeting, employee roaster, timeline, etc.

(WBS) Work Breakdown Structure

WBS refers to splitting the whole project plan into tasks and assigning them to working staff. This technique helps employees to understand the project task hierarchy.

Communications Management Plan

CMP refers to creating a communication hierarchy plan for project employees that define who to contact and when. Or we can say that this is the communication structure within the company.

Risk Management Plan

We RMP to face and handle risk during a running project. There are many kinds of risks and hazard factors that can not be handled without a risk management plan.

SWOT Analysis Templates

These are simple and easy-to-use templates to analyze all provided prompts. These four divided sections are only for strengths, and weaknesses and analyze the facts and figures of the project. By creating a details analysis first and foremost make a business plan. In this way, your businesses enable you to formulate all the directions that you have to take.

Although, strengths and weaknesses are the measures of necessary factors in business.  These columns are compared to different companies in the competition.

Gap Analysis Templates

Businesses and projects at the initial level care for their performance in working. Usually, a gap analysis template is only for these two performances either, potential or actual.

To determine and use the performance of the entire company, time investment, a particular project, and all available resources.

If you want to get started on any project why don’t you use these gap analysis templates to measure your performance quickly?

It compares the advanced status, and strategies and tries to reduce breaks in performance.

Project Scheduling Template

Project scheduling is the backbone of any project that assists you to make a project plan and run it according to your set schedule. It’s a mechanism that tells us which project task is required to be completed at a specific time or we can say that project tasking for a specific time is scheduling or setting project milestones, and task activities on the scale of starting and ending date.

Usually, the first-week number is the purpose of functionality. It automatically measures the weekdays that are based on the standard. You can also enter the initial stage manually. Sometimes people like to use these excel calendars if they have some event more than a scheduled time.

Project Tracking and Reporting

Project tracking and reporting is the last stage of the project management life cycle. Basically, it helps to track your project activity, status, progress, etc. We use this professional template for monitoring, controlling, and making a project report that covers all kinds of aspects.

All the above templates and spreadsheets are for different purposes. The work management tools, collaboration, and all interactions and communications with robust features.

However, this is very easy to create your reports, and details, track progress, and manage all documentation with the best-organized information. Different companies offer templates to make your work easy and professional to start your project.

Project Budgeting

Project budgeting is one of the foundations for a healthy project. It is up to us, as project managers, to find the investment that will realize our goals and match this with an appropriate amount of project funds.

This process starts by making an itemized cost estimate. Every possible cost is examined extremely carefully, from personnel and material fees to overheads and contingencies. It is accuracy in this first phase of work which lays the basis through the project ‘s life for financial control.

Following this, we will carry out a cost-benefit analysis. It enables us to truly understand the economic value of our project, to guarantee that each dollar spent has a tangible outcome. This exercise requires strategic allocation for resources and promotes the emphasis on value over cost.

Project budgeting also involves getting the opinions and consents of stakeholders. We submit our budget in a way that is easy to understand, justifying each term of it. This kind of transparency creates confidence and ensures that there is enough support for the project ‘s financial plan.

On the final hand we monitor and adjust our budget as the project proceeds. This flexible approach allows us to face the numerous unforeseen challenges and opportunities that occur. Only through diligent management combined with ongoing monitoring can the project at hand still function within its constraints of time and money, nonetheless providing added value for our clients and stakeholders.

Financial Templates

For instance, a business or small company is for a different idea to enhance the purpose of the company. Creating some business financial plans makes sure and helps successfully.

Provide the best plan to your partners and primary documentation is easy to manage with financial templates. These financial templates are free and completely designed for professional users. With a huge range of quality and simple work, you can find different tasks and financial budgeting planning.

Usually, some business persons are trying to consult with experts to get some software for these templates. With the financial templates, you can find more related templates for the use of business purposes.

1. Project Financial Planning Templates
2. Business Budget Planning Templates
3. Project budget templates

In every business, there is profit definitely risk exists. You can identify your risk and all profit with the necessary factors in business. Yet this is important for every project and makes sure you have all the procedures to analyze the potential risk.

With the use of risk templates, you can measure risk and simply rank your project or business. These are based on different steps and mitigate all problems & queries before it happens. You can map all issues in the best way accordingly and customize your risk to profit.