Project Management Templates

Over the past several couple of weeks I’ve discussed many project management-related templates and documents that are commonly used. And along the way over the past 10 months there have been a few other templates and documents discussed.

In an attempt to provide a one-stop document to link to all those templates and documents discussed so far, I’m going to pull them all into this article as a list with available links. Hopefully, having the accumulated list available in one place will be helpful to our readers.

Again, not all of these will be links to templates…some will merely be links to documents that have been discussed in greater detail in previous articles.

• Statement of Work
• Project Status Report
• Communication Plan
• Communication Plan
• Risk Management Plan
• Lessons Learned
• Lessons Learned
• Requirements Traceability Matrix
• Market Analysis
• Project Management Methodology
• Quality Management Plan
• Project Request Document
• Project Charter Document
• Business Case Document
• Change Order Request
• Change Order Request
• Resource Request
• Onsite Visit Progress Report
• Procurement Plan
• Lessons Learned Survey
• Disaster Recover Plan

Summary

As discussed in most of these articles, if having the actual template in a Word doc format would be helpful, just let me know and I’ll be happy to send it to you if I have it. In some cases, I may be able to send you an actual example document from a real project allowing you to better see how I’ve populated some of the information with meaningful data. I’ll revise and republish this article as I make more templates and documents on these and similar topics available that I think would be useful to our readers.

The Business Case Document

I’m trying to get on a roll providing our readers with some hopefully meaningful samples and templates of documents that may be needed on their projects.  These are templates that I created a few years ago – basically from information I think I probably found somewhere else…(isn’t that always the case?).

As I stated in The Project Charter Document article, if our readers have samples or templates they’d like to share, I’ll be more than happy to provide alternate versions of documents that I’m including here or examples of documents that I’m not covering…either will be much appreciated.  And I’m also very willing to send along Word doc versions of these templates to anyone who asks…just email me.

Here I am presenting a template for a Business Case Document.  If your customer is external, you may never see this or may never be involved with it.  If your customer is internal, it’s very possible that you’ll not only see it, you’ll be asked to help create it.  The key is to try to justify the existence of the project and the work to be performed.  The best way to do that is to show some cost/benefit analysis or return on investment (ROI).

This doesn’t have to be an extremely detailed document – leave that for the statement of work (SOW) and, of course, for requirements documents.  It does, however, need to speak very well to executive management and the key decision makers if there is to be any hope of kicking the project off.  Someone, somewhere, makes the final decision on whether or not to throw $$ and personnel resources at this effort and this document needs to convince them to approve that effort.

PROJECT BUSINESS CASE

[Save file name as: client name BUSINESS CASE yyyymmdd]

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Provide a brief description of the project objectives and overall performance of the work to be performed.

SOLUTION

Describe the proposed solution.

COST MODEL

ROI SUMMARY

Describe when the break-even point of the project will occur and expected annual revenue generated by the project.

PROJECT RISKS

Describe risks that may impact the cost/benefit of the project performance.

The Project Charter Document

As I discussed previously, I want to bring the readers of PM Tips as many useful…or at least semi-useful…project related documents, samples and templates as possible.  This is a place for new and experienced project managers to gather and share ideas, so I’m sharing.  If any of you have samples that you’d like to share – send them to me and I’ll summarize and post them on here.I have to admit, I’ve not had much occasion to create a project charter document.  Eric Verzuh’s book “The Portable MBA in Project Management” describes the project charter document in this way…

“A project charter announces that a new project has begun. The purpose of the charter is to demonstrate management support for the project and the project manager. It is a simple, powerful tool, but it is not necessarily complex. As an announcement, it can take the form of a memo, a letter, or an e-mail. It contains the name and purpose of the project, the project manager’s name, and a statement of support from the issuer. The charter is sent to everyone who may be associated with the project, reaching as wide an audience as practical because its intent is to give notice of the new project and the new project manager.”

A few years ago I created several templates that I’d like to share with you here over several upcoming articles, including this Project Charter document.  They are merely a basis to get started – I’ve modified them all when I use them in order to fit the specific project or needs of the customer, but they at least provide a starting point.  Again, if you have templates or samples you’d like to share here, let me know and I’ll do my best to get them posted for our readers.

PROJECT CHARTER

[Save file name as: client name PROJECT CHARTER yyyymmdd]

PROJECT BACKGROUND

Provide a brief description of the situation that has initiated the project.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES

Describe the objectives of the project – “SMART”: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Based.

ASSUMPTIONS

Describe the initial assumptions under which the project will be to perform.

CONTRAINTS

Describe the scope/cost/ time/resource constraints under which the project will be to perform.

IDENTIFIED RISKS

Describe any known risks which will need to be addressed with the project statement of work.

APPROVAL

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties have agreed to the Project Charter on the date or dates indicated below.

CLIENT APPROVAL

________________________________

VENDOR APPROVAL

________________________________