" DOCUMENTATION " - The way to Success !

Dear all,
Ever since computers came in to use widely, most of the offices follow a PAPERLESS POLICY
, which means they store all official information as a soft copy and not as a hard copy. Its all digital in todays world... be it your leave application, payslip, companies policies and procedures, presentations, etc.. !
Let us see How essential is Documentation for an Oracle Application Implementation project.
As we know performing an implementation takes longer duration of time ... ( If not years, it will certainly take a minimum of 3 months )
During this long duration of time, there is going to be consistent communication between the Client and the Consultants. And there are chances that the Clients management may change the personnel involved in the implementation project and appoint a new person for communicating with the client. And the same can happen to the Consultant also, a consultant can be taken out of a project at any time by his consulting company and a new or a different consultant can be placed to continue with the operations from where the previous person left.
Now imagine that you are the new person who has taken the responsibility to handle the project from now onwards, what are the things that you will be wanting to know ?
You would first like to know what is the Project Plan
And in which stage of project we are in right now
Status on the work performed so far
Communication between the client happened so far
What is your role in the project
etc.. etc...
Now that you have the list of information which you wanted to know, how you are going to get the answers? It is highly impractical to expect the previous consultant to explain all the things to the new consultant who takes over the job. There are Chances that the previous consultant may not be looking in to the key issues and might have overlooked on areas which are non critical in nature. So believing on words may not show the true picture most of the times...

So whats the best way out of it......

The best way out of it is to refer the documentations that has been prepared on the day to day happenings from the very first day (kick off) of the project till the end of the project ( Go Live) !

Most of the consultants would disagree on documenting all the information, since documentation is not an easy job, it eats time.... but every one has to remember it saves our ass most of the times, when things are messed up !
Not many people voluntarily take up documentation jobs involved in the project.... Infact my fellow Technical consultant expressed that he hated documentation so much, thats why he became a technical consultant instead of functional... !

Now that we know how vital a documentation is needed for a project... we will see how the documentation needs to be carried out in a implementation project in future posts !