Last week, I led my first project as a project manager. I was genuinely excited about the documentation part. I've always enjoyed documenting things; I'm a big memory keeper in my personal life. I keep notes, lists, and have been maintaining journals since I was a kid. Additionally, I love tracking various data in my life.
I wanted to build a template that could assist me in all future projects, which I could work on and expand over time.
I usually prefer working in Obsidian for all my personal and work-related notes, or in Google Keep or Google Docs for very short or long-form content. However, because most people in our company love to work in ==Notion==, I used Notion to make it easier to share in our group.
Client Details
Client Briefing
A catch-all for the information the client gives us in our kick-off call, further sorted into the following categories:
Project Requirements
- The things the client wants us to do: Dashboards, data prep, general consulting, etc.
- The programs the client wants us to work in
- A general overview of the requirements
Project Priorities
Here we will keep track of all the priorities in order. We list out all dashboards to be built and the questions the client needs answered with all of them. Also, all the general business questions the client wants answered.
Stakeholders & Presentation Details:
Understanding our stakeholders is crucial for the project's success. This includes: knowing who will be presented to, for whom the data will be collected, and who the dashboards are intended for, including language preferences.
A Summary to send back to the client
This will be a copy of the kick-off call summary I'll send to the client on day 1. It will give the client a chance to see if we are on the same page and understood all the details. It's also a security for both parties involved on what will be worked on in the following week.
-> Follow-Up scheduled for:
An info for everyone on the next scheduled follow-up meeting with the client.
Client Questions
All the answers to important questions we keep track on:
Data Q's
All the questions we need to ask about
- Data prepping
- Data cleaning
- Data definitions
- How we can access the data
- How to join their tables
- Important KPIs for the stakeholders / how they want to measure success or failure
As well as links to the data model and the data dictionary.
Design Q's
All the questions we need to ask about
- Dashboard design
- Who uses our Dashboards and how will they access them
- Are we replacing existing dashboard?
- Privacy and security concerns
Delivery Q's
All the questions we need to ask about
- The stakeholders and contact persons
- Follow-up meetings
- The final presentations and deliverables
- How they'll continue working on the project after we finished it
Team Coordination
Splitting The Tasks
Splitting the work between each of our team members. Trying to find a way to divide the workload fairly.
Next Scheduled Team Meetings
A list of all the team meetings during the week. You can send out Teams invitations for them later.
Daily Progress
A quick summary of what we worked on every day.
Monday
Tuesday
...
Data Research / Cleaning Q's
Questions and problems that came up while looking into the data. Specific dataset information the client gave us, for example, the currency of the sales numbers if not otherwise specified.
Problems
General problems we are facing with the project. Trying to keep track of every block in the road so we can solve them one by one.
Mid-Week Client Follow-Up
Follow-Up Questions for the Client
A list of all the questions listed out that we have for the follow-up call. From data prepping to general questions for the output, KPIs, design, etc.
Follow-Up Notes from the Client
Similar to the briefing section, a space to keep track of every single opinion the client had on our sketches & drafts, as well as all the clarifying answers the client gave us on our questions.
Don't forget to turn your notes into follow up tasks! You might want to email the client with additional information or change something in your dashboards. It's important not to forget what you wanted to incorporate.
Final Output
User Stories
As a X, when I Y, I want to be able to Z.
As a ...... when ..... I want ..... so I can ........ .
Dashboard Design
All the detailed information regarding our final dashboard output:
Color
- The explanation of the color theme, ex codes and the use case for every color. (For example for positive trends, negative trends, etc.)
- A link to a website like Coolors.co to easily be able to copy the hex codes
- Specific color recommendations for heatmaps, backgrounds, etc.
Fonts
Detailed information on font choice:
- Colors
- Font types
- Font styles for headlines, sub headlines, text, etc.
Formatting
Information on the dashboard size, logo, padding, borders, etc.
Upload Destination
Where should the team upload the dashboards? Is there a naming convention?
In our case, we all uploaded to a folder on our Tableau Server.
Presentation Details
- What we have to prep for the presentation & slides
- A scheduled rehearsal
- Presentation language & stakeholders attending the presentation
- The order in which everyone presents their business area & dashboard, so that it makes the most sense from a storytelling point of view
Next Steps (Things we couldn't finish)
- Charts, KPI's, systems or filters we'd incorporate if there was more time
- Tips for the company on what they could work on next
- Tips on how they could streamline their data processes or rework their data tables
Project Handover
- Tidy up workbooks & workflows
- Make sure fields and calculations have clear names
- Annotate your calculations
- Any sketches and first mock-ups
- The full documentation
- The presentation slides
- The final dashboards