The Critical Role of Documentation in Project Success

Ryan Rupf - Cross Company

Author Bio

Ryan Rupf

Proposal Engineer - Cross Process Solutions

Ryan Rupf grew up in Texas, but spent most of his young adult life in Perth, Western Australia where he graduated with an Electronics and Communication Degree from Curtin University. Shortly after receiving his degree, he came back to the US and found himself working as an industrial control systems engineer. Ryan has spent his working life wiring sensors under conveyor belts in Pittsburgh steel mills, programming distributed control systems for global pharmaceutical enterprises, and on many more endeavors in between. When he isn’t working, Ryan enjoys photography, rowing, and serving at church. View Profile

Ensuring Project Success Through Comprehensive and Agreed-Upon Documentation

The beginning of a new project can be an exciting and fast paced time. The sales person is looking forward to seeing a proposal become a project, the engineers are enthusiastic about building another great system, and the customer can’t wait to prove their ROI calculations to the corporate team. The thrill of breaking ground on such an endeavor can make the most seasoned teams forget what lays the foundation of a successful project.

It’s not sexy.

It’s not new.

It’s not fun.

It’s documentation.

More specifically, it’s the front-end project documentation that defines what is going to be done, how it will be done, and why we are doing it in the first place. To create great documentation, two things need to happen. First, it must be developed correctly, and second, it must be agreed upon.

Beautiful documentation that does not receive agreement is useless.

Terrible documentation that is agreed upon is dangerous.

No documentation and no agreement leads to almost certain failure.

If any of these conditions occur, the project is at risk of scope creep, denial of responsibility, unsafe execution, and financial failure.

Projects that are safe, efficient, and successful start with documentation that is both correct and approved. Unfortunately, this takes time and humility, two things that can be difficult to come by in our industry. Time is needed to write, review, and iterate documents. Humility is needed to slow down, listen, and think. At Cross Company, we place humility high on our list of cultural cornerstones for this exact reason.

There are many different documents that a systems integrator can write to define a project, but the two most critical are the Scope of Work and the Design Specification. The Scope of Work is a high level definition of responsibility that is developed and approved before moving onto the Design Specifications. The Design Specification then explains the technical details of the project execution. On large projects, the Design Specification can be broken down into a higher level Functional Design Specification (FDS) and lower level Detail Design Specification (DDS).

Generally, the Scope of Work is written during the proposal stage of the project, and the Design Specification is written during the design phase of the project. What is most important to consider here is that this documentation is written before any project work begins.

Once a project has a defined scope of work and approved design specifications, the fun can finally begin. Remember the team I introduced in the beginning of the article? The sales person, the engineers, and the customer can now proceed with work in peace and confidence, knowing they can hold each other accountable to the wonderful project documentation. Everyone knows what to expect and who’s providing it. I can hear them sleeping soundly already.

 

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Did you know… Cross Company is an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan). Our ESOP started in 1979 and as of 2006, we are 100% employee-owned! Learn more about our ESOP and how that benefits both team members and our customers.
Did you know... the precision measurement group at Cross was founded in 1939 by our current CEO's grandfather, Jim King. That's a whole lot of calibration!
Did you know... A fingerprint weighs about 50 micrograms. We know, we weighed it! The residue left from a finger can actually make a difference in weight results which is why we wear gloves when we calibrate weights. For reference, a sheet of paper is about 4.5 grams, that’s 4.5 million micrograms.
Did you know… Cross Company has grown significantly since our start in 1954. Over the years we've acquired 26 companies! Today, our five groups have expertise in everything from industrial automation to precision measurement, and industry knowledge going all the way back to 1939.