Documentation Tips: Onsite vs. Offsite Archival

August 29, 2011 Leave a Comment

Once your project is in the wrap-up phase, it’s time to decide where your records will be stored—onsite or offsite. We’ve put together some pros, cons, and things to consider for each option to help you determine the solution that’s right for you. And remember that documentation doesn’t have to live in paper form; you should also be deciding where and how you’ll store electronic records, too.

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Retrieval

Onsite: Plucking a record out of storage for review couldn’t be easier than having everything housed onsite and at your fingertips. In-house retrievals, especially if they’re frequent, are usually quick and cheap. However, many onsite archival systems require at least nominal staffing to maintain organization, and ensure records are stored in the appropriate (read: findable) location and are promptly retrieved when destruction/review dates come up. Project teams could spend hours digging through boxes looking for a critical piece of paper if the system isn’t well-managed.

Offsite: Retrieval requires very little staff support, but can take days depending on your company’s service level agreement. For last-minute requests, there may be no option but to drive to the storage site and gain access in person, which can also be a problem if the facility has restrictions on which company representatives are authorized to access records.

Cost

Onsite: If you have plenty of space to store your records and enough staff to manage archival tasks such as labeling, monitoring destruction/review dates, and retrieving boxes or disks, then the monthly costs to maintain your archival program onsite could be quite low.

Offsite: Ongoing storage costs can add up as your record base grows, and maintaining sufficient funding when times are lean is sometimes a challenge. Costs can also become burdensome if employees are regularly sending records out for archival or calling them back for review.

Space

Onsite: Allotting sufficient space for record storage could become cost-prohibitive, as well as a potential sticking point when archival and headcount space needs collide. This is especially true for companies that are land-locked in their current building(s) or have limited expansion options. Relocating archive boxes can eat up a surprising amount of time.

Offsite: Space is rarely an issue when archival occurs off-site, though it’s best to check with your provider to ensure that future growth can be accommodated in the same location.

Safety

Onsite: Disasters that hit your organization—fire, earthquake, flooding—are also likely to affect the records stored onsite. Even things like excess humidity or a broken heating unit can result in the loss of archived materials. Maintaining business continuity during or after a disaster will be difficult if your records have been damaged or destroyed.

Offsite: Geographical separation is often preferred for archived records, especially those that are highly sensitive or will be critical to recovery efforts. Many storage facilities are designed to resist disaster, whether natural or man-made. Be sure your team and the archival vendor are on the same page when it comes to accessing records in an emergency.

Security

Onsite: Security within your own facility can be tightly controlled and the procedures finely tuned to your specific needs. Unfortunately, that means you also need resources in place to ensure those procedures are followed, whether that means adding staff to monitor access or building rooms with lockable doors.

Offsite: You’ll likely have less flexibility within an archival provider’s established procedures, but their security measures are often extremely robust. They also have the necessary personnel available to guarantee that only authorized individuals access your records. Additional levels of security, such as biometric readers and video cameras, may also be part of their overall program.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

Filed Under: Documentation Tips, Project Management, Project Management Tips

6 Tips to Tame the E-mail Monster

August 16, 2010 Leave a Comment

Are you spending too much time on e-mail? If so, use these tips to turn the tables and make e-mail work for you.

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Compose — Respond — Send

1. Keep e-mails concise, clear, and relevant. By following these three guidelines throughout your communications, you’re less likely to waste time on overly verbose messages, or messages that require additional clarification (and composition time) later.

2. Whenever possible, respond to or forward an existing e-mail instead of composing your own from scratch. Leveraging the original sender’s text allows you to reduce the amount of time you must spend summarizing or restating information, without reducing the usefulness of your communications to your recipients.

3. Utilize distribution lists at every opportunity. Organize them by project, functional area, or reporting structure, and you’ll spend less time looking up who should receive each message. It’s also a method that prompts fewer interruptions later when you realize you forgot to include someone, and must now locate the e-mail and forward it to them.

Store — Locate — Retrieve

4. Create project-specific folders in your e-mail program to produce a framework for storing e-mails that allows for quick retrieval later. A logical and consistent structure will make the archival process more efficient, too.

5. Be judicious in what you save—electronic storage space seems unlimited, but documenting multiple projects can quickly occupy an enormous amount of server space. Duplicate information should be consolidated, outdated information should be made current, and extraneous information should be discarded.

6. Take the time now to become familiar with your e-mail program’s search function, so you can quickly and efficiently utilize it later. Narrowly focused searches will be faster and more fruitful; apply as many filters as possible, and target your key terms to return only those messages you’re most likely to need.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

Filed Under: Checklists, Documentation Tips, Project Management, Project Management Lists, Project Management Tips Tagged With:

Project Management Tips: Regulatory Oversight 101

May 10, 2010 Leave a Comment

Projects of every size and in any industry may sometimes require regulatory oversight or approval. Working with a regulatory body has the potential to affect every facet of your project, from where documents are archived to how long a particular activity must take.

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Regulatory oversight may seem daunting at first, but some basic research and preparation will go a long way toward making your project successful.

What information do you need? The following breakdown is by no means all-inclusive, but it will give you a good starting point.

Who

Contractors with particular licenses or certifications; regulatory inspectors, reviewers, and other contacts; internal team members with specific responsibilities (life safety, insurance, licenses, etc.); vendors able to provide agency-approved goods (equipment, tools, chemicals) and services (storage, cleaning, documentation).

What

Scope of oversight; text of codes and regulations; documentation that must be posted, submitted, filed, stored, signed or discarded; requirements for insurance, licenses, certifications, insurance and training.

When

Deadlines for requests for information; expiration of permits, certificates or licenses; actions that must be completed in sequence or require mid-project review and approval; limits on the types of activities that can be completed concurrently.

Where

Locations for meetings, tests, procedures, reviews, inspections, and the submittal of documents or data; storage requirements for documentation, equipment, test results, chemicals and other materials.

How

Approved procedures; deviation reports; requests for information; submittal of data; signatures required on internal and external forms; recordkeeping and reporting requirements; security of data, computers, software platforms and documents; restrictions on quantities of chemicals and other materials.

Now that you have an idea of the information you’re looking for, it’s time to begin your research.

Visit the regulatory body’s Web site. Review online copies of the regulations or codes, and sign up to be notified when changes are made. Consider ordering a hard copy of the current regulations, so your team can reference a single common information source. Depending on the agency, you may also be able to find a list of recent actions. The results of past inspections, pending permit requests and recently completed projects are all good learning tools.

Network within the client’s industry. Others have likely dealt with the same regulatory requirements, and can help you understand them and their potential impact. If you’re able to find local contacts experienced in dealing with regulators, all the better – regulatory agencies often have regional offices, with inspectors or reviewers responsible for your particular area. Familiarizing yourself with the working style and expectations of the local regulators will put you a step ahead.

Ask the client. If you’re comfortable approaching your client, you can learn a great deal by examining past projects completed under the same regulations. Review the documentation, deliverables, and results; become familiar with the potential impact to your project’s schedule as a result of necessary inspections, leadtime for onsite regulatory visits, availability of specialty contractors, and activities or processes that require a set period of time to complete; make note of any can’t-miss deadlines; identify internal resources; and plan for outside experts you may need to involve.

Look for industry and professional associations. Locate groups that are comprised of companies frequently under the same regulatory oversight as your new project. These organizations often maintain information on the status of regulations and recent developments, and can provide you with additional resources. Their members have a deep knowledgebase of past projects – be sure to ask about projects that failed, or were significantly hampered by incorrect actions or poor decisions. Understanding how to avoid these situations will teach you a great deal about managing your project correctly from start to finish.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

http://www.pm-alliance.com

Filed Under: Checklists, Documentation Tips, PMO Development, Project Management, Project Management Tips, Project Management Training, Project Office Tagged With:

Project Management Documentation Tips: Forms & Templates

April 7, 2010 Leave a Comment

Forms and templates are the foundation for many types of project documents. Rather than putting unnecessary effort into creating new forms for each project, the use of existing forms and templates can streamline your project’s documentation requirements, and allow your team to focus on higher-level objectives. A variety of resources are available to you when looking for ready-made forms, and a few simple tips will help keep your project’s momentum moving forward when truly custom forms are needed.

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Save time by leveraging the work that others have done, and use pre-made forms or templates when possible. The supply of ready-to-use forms is vast, and you’re likely to find exactly what you need for the majority of applications. Remember, though, to respect copyright laws. Whether you search the web or peruse one of the many available template books, always look for materials that are copyright-free, or whose copyright allows for unrestricted use.

If your team has already created a similar form for use on a previous project, why not repurpose it for today’s need? Existing templates for checklists, memos and reports can often be applied to new projects with little or no modification. This practice also helps to maintain document continuity from project to project, making future research easier for project team members while also presenting stakeholders and end users with information in a familiar format.

You’ll occasionally encounter the need for new or unique forms. To avoid the possibility that multiple team members will each create their own version – often resulting in several forms circulating through your team and potentially causing conflicts or confusion – it’s wise to designate one person to manage all project-based templates. This helps to ensure your team’s documentation is clear, organized, and in a standardized format, and also facilitates master template storage in one always-available location.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

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Project Management Documentation Tips: Electronic vs. Hard Copy

March 31, 2010 Leave a Comment

The shift to electronic documentation is in full swing, but hard copies haven’t been rendered obsolete quite yet. An efficient project may be best served by skillfully combining formats and allowing team members and stakeholders to access materials in the way best suited to each type of document. Understanding how materials are used, distributed and archived will help you determine the best way to use each format’s benefits to your advantage.

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Most project documentation falls into one of three main categories:

Working documents reflect the current state of the project. They’re updated as needed throughout the project’s lifecycle, and may be shared by various members of the team. Working documents are fluid in nature, and usually see frequent revisions.

Now: Creating and maintaining these types of documents electronically is often the most efficient way to go, as it utilizes fewer resources. Updating and distributing working documents is also easily accomplished when they’re in electronic format.

Later: Archival can be accomplished in either format, and will largely depend on the amount of physical storage space available to you, as well as your team’s preference for one format over another. It’s not uncommon at the end of a project to find yourself with a staggering quantity of working documents to evaluate, and some aggressive purging will be in order when preparing project materials for archival.

Reference documents form the project’s information base (i.e., contracts, vendor lists, etc.), and are either created anew or taken from previous projects to facilitate standardization. Reference documents usually undergo fewer updates and changes than working documents, and are used chiefly as a baseline for a project’s activities.

Now: Either electronic or paper format may be appropriate for reference documents. Factors such as the need for remote access will tip the scales toward electronic files, while a more localized team could mean that pinning a paper copy of your vendor list where everyone can see it is efficient and perfectly acceptable.

Later: Some reference documents are prime candidates for archival in hard copy format. Materials such as drawings, artwork, floorplans, charts, diagrams and images may not transfer well into electronic format. It’s also possible that your reference documents will be subject to review by regulatory officials or some other external oversight group. Maintaining a format that’s easy to access and utilize should be of primary importance in these instances.

Reports and status updates are distributed among team members and/or to vendors, business partners, stakeholders and end users. While these reports are updated throughout the project’s lifecycle, creation of each new version is typically controlled within the project team to ensure the integrity of the information being distributed.

Now: Unless your stakeholders strongly support electronic documents, many organizations are still most comfortable with formal reports being presented in hard copy format. If you’re providing a client with project support, be sure to ask what format they prefer.

Later: Formal reports and other milestone indicators need to include any accompanying charts or spreadsheets when sent to long-term storage. Your goal is to make these materials easily located, referenced and understood when retrieved later, which makes the selection of an archival format a prime concern. If storing reports electronically, take care to properly index all materials and establish accurate review or destruction dates. Reports stored in hard copy format should be cataloged and thoroughly reviewed to ensure you’re keeping final versions and not working copies that may contain errors or be otherwise confusing when referenced later. Consider the physical space available for storage, as well as the potential for format incompatibilities or other issues that may hinder future retrieval or use.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

Filed Under: Checklists, Documentation Tips, Project Management, Project Management Tips, Project Office, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,
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