Project Communication and Documentation 223Purchasing and Contracting Documents.You’ll likely have to
procure materials and labor on some or all of your projects. The
key documents associated with this process include the following:
- Material Listing. Description of materials to be pur-
chased. - Purchase Order (PO). Form used to place orders for
materials with outside suppliers - Request for Proposals/Request for Quotes (RFPs/RFQs).
Documents used to solicit proposals from prospective
vendors of products or services. - Contracts. Legally binding agreements with external sup-
pliers of goods and services
Progress Evaluation.These reports describe the amount of
work being accomplished. These documents typically come
from two sources:
- Team-Generated Reports. This is the information you’re
collecting in your regular team meetings. You should
have documents to serve as a record, such as marked-
up schedules or filled-in templates. (See Chapter 9, “
How Do You Gather Information?”) - System-Generated Reports. If your organization has the
capability to store and retrieve project data, such as labor
hours or material costs, you should download this data
periodically and keep the documents in your project file.
Project Change Notice. There are many names for this critical
document, which is used to document and get approval for
any significant deviation from the project baseline. At the con-
clusion of your project, you ought to be able to reconcile the
overall deviation between where you ended up and where you
told management you’d end up. That reconciliation is embod-
ied in a stack (hopefully short!) of project change notices.
Project Status Report. You should provide regular updates to
your organizational management, whether through written
reports, one-on-one meetings with the project sponsor, or
periodic stand-up presentations.