Project Charter

Project charter document is the first document that is created to start the project. Project Charter development is a pre-Project effort. Project Charter has high level details about the project like initial definition of the scope of the project based on the concerns and requirements of the stakeholders [in the Stakeholder Register]. This scope may be altered at a later stage of course by going through the Change Request Process. Project Charter also provides an initial financial commitment from the Project Sponsors based on the estimates provided or based on a similar project in past. Following items form a typical project charter document: 

1.  Title
2. Header [Project Name, Project Number, Section/Chapter Name]
3. Footer [Page numbers of ]
4. Version / Author Details
5. Table Of Contents
6. Index for Pictures/Figures
7. Executive / Short Summary
8. Overview
9. Scope of the project
10. Financial Commitment
11. Stakeholders
12. Glossary
13. Appendices

Common Sections in All Documents

Before I start discussing each document, lets first look at some commonalities related to all documents.

1. Title
2. Header [Project Name, Project Number, Section/Chapter Name]
3. Footer [Page numbers of ]
4. Version / Author Details
5. Table Of Contents
6. Index for Pictures/Figures
7. Executive / Short Summary
8. Glossary
9. Appendices

These sections will be in almost all the documents. Sections above are important for the structure of document, so that when printed it provides detailed information to the user without going back and forth between the pages.

Now that we have formed a base, in my next post we'll look at each of the documents listed in my earlier post

Types Of Documents Used For Software Development

Lets see how many different types of documents are required for software development. I am listing some of the documents which I have come across and would like others to add to the list. Some of the documents listed may overlap each other but I have still listed them.

1. Project Charter
2. Project Scope
3. Request For Proposal [in case of offshoring or outsourcing]
4. Proposal Document [in case of offshoring or outsourcing]
5. Systems Requirement Specifications
6. Functional Specifications
7. Systems Architecture Document
8. High Level Design
9. Low Level / Detail Design
10. Unit Test Plan
11. Unit Test Cases
12. Integration Test Plan
13. Integration Test Cases
14. System Test Plan
15. System Test Cases
16. User Acceptance Test Plan
17. User Acceptance Test Cases
18. Deployment Document
19. User Manual / Help
20. FAQs
21. Help Desk Manual
22. Operations Manual

My plan is to discuss these in coming weeks and also have examples on each one of them.