|
This Guest paper was submitted
for publication and is copyright to Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP, © 2013.
Published here August 2014.
The material has been abstracted from Jamal Moustafaev's forthcoming book on Project
Scope Management.
|
|
The Project Plan Contents
Revision History Table
Like any important and constantly changing document the Project Plan should
contain a "Revision History Table". The purpose of the table is to record version
number, version date, name of the person making the change and a short revision
description, see sample in Figure 1.
|
Version Number
|
Version
Date
|
Added By
|
Revision Description
|
|
0.1
|
01-Sep-2009
|
John Smith
|
First draft of the document
|
|
0.2
|
15-Sep-2009
|
John Smith
|
Changes in scope and time made after the review with the project
team
|
|
0.3
|
20-Sep-2009
|
John Smith
|
Changes and additions in scope, risks and budget sections made
after the stakeholder review
|
|
1.0
|
10-Oct-2009
|
John Smith
|
Document sign-off
|
Figure 1: Sample Revision History Table
Why should we keep a record of all the changes made to the document?
- First, one can expect to make up to several dozen revisions to a project plan during the planning and execution stages. Stakeholder feedback, customer-initiated updates and technical project team inspections act as a source of updates and modification to the document. By the same token, during the execution stage change requests, various risks and other events may have an impact on various aspects of the project. Committing all of this information to the memory of the project manager is certainly not the most efficient use of his brainpower.
- Secondly, people have the tendency to save the files they receive via e-mails to their computer hard drives. As a result they continue referring to the older versions of the document while the newer, "fresher" versions have already been posted in the project documentation repositories. Therefore, "what version of the document are you looking at?" is one of the most frequently asked questions in conversations between the project manager and the project stakeholders.
|
|
Quick
Overall Outline
