subject: Documentation For Projects - Learn From These Strategies [print this page] Today's issue is documentsToday's issue is documents. An item that is the bane of many individuals but has excellent opportunity for improvement in time management.
Documentation
Even in today's technological environment documentation for projects appears to grow at a speed that is disproportional to the increase in workload. It might use up a substantial percentage of an individual's time. Paperwork appears to be produced from many sources too many to trouble listing any here.
The driving forces for paperwork are also numerous but might consist of:
Regulatory needs, health and safety needs, communication, recording data and legal requirements.
The increase in documents may easily detract from controlling your work or having any time to think and plan. Putting documents aside to manage later is just delaying the inevitable.
How long do you keep documentation?
There are some that use delaying techniques. An incoming report ends up in a heap of other documents. Someday you will get around to it because you are so tied up. You will undoubtedly tackle this report if its urgency becomes significant-- so you neglect it. The process then progresses along normal lines.
1 week: Other things appear on your radar, so the document may wait a little longer. Nobody has called for the information so far so it begins to get buried in the pile.
2 weeks: Still nobody has asked for the information. Its importance has been devalued. You will undoubtedly deal with it when you clear away the stockpile.
4 weeks: Possibly someone enquires as to the status of the report but says, 'don't worry if you haven't managed to do anything, the position has changed'. If no one has questioned the document following one month it is clearly not relevant and you think about erasing it-- but you retain it just in case.
6 months: You find the document; have completely failed to remember what it was about and shred it.
The above illustration may be familar but simply applies to documents that call for some type of action and not for anything that requires future filing, such as reports or standard operation procedures (SOPs). These would have policies in position to hold them for particular period of times, for instance 1, 5 or 10 years.
Notice that, although stored documents might be digitally reproduced, so that at some point the originals might be erased, the originals of a few documents might always need retaining for a particular duration. This is because just the original may be valid as it will show any modifications and additionally contains original signatures.
What you need is a system that suits your objective and permits you to effectively deal with reports in a prompt way.
Archived documents will have a holding duration established in a policy. This may be anything between 1 and 10 plus years. This is common practice for documentation for projects. The time period will generally be driven by regulatory and legal needs but could also support internal demands to keep information so that knowledge is not lost.
