Document quality

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In project management, document quality refers to the quality of written work results ( documents ) based on defined criteria.

The usual principles of document quality listed here can also be transferred to other areas of quality assurance .

criteria

Comprehensibility

Documents are understandable if knowledgeable readers can understand the content of the document, taking into account its purpose. This means that the people dealing with the topic on the client and contractor side must understand the content. It is not necessary, for example, for an analysis document about a CRM system to be understood by an employee who is not involved in the project and has nothing to do with CRM systems in the company.

Accuracy and consistency

Document content must be sufficiently precise with its verbal statements and descriptions to ensure the desired use. Blurring in the document should be avoided in order to avoid implicit statements by the author that will not be recognized by the reader. Terms like “in general”, “mostly”, ... are indicators of a lack of clarity in the formulation. Documents should not contain conflicting statements, but should be consistent . Documents are particularly consistent (correct) if their contents pursue coordinated goals and implementation paths and the description of a document corresponds to the current status of all other documents. The requirements must correspond to the professional and technical conditions, otherwise the wrong system is described.

Topicality

It is up-to-date if the content of documents is up to date. This means that old documents have to be updated if the facts change and the document still plays a role in the project. From the problem of the topicality of individual documents, one goes to a single statement of a document in a database instead of keeping it in a document. This means that the individual statements / requirements / ... can be dealt with over the entire life cycle of the project or product. This also leads to an increase in consistency. Examples of bundling in a database are requirements or test management tools.

Identifiability and Completeness

Clear accessibility of the parts of documents that provide information on a delimited issue. Documents of the same type (e.g. all requirements documents) should be structured similarly in a project in order to make them easier to identify. This rarely works across project boundaries because the projects are too diverse. Presence of the complete information in a document which, depending on its intended use, is necessary to deal with its topic in terms of scope and level of detail.

Consistency (correctness)

Documents are consistent if their content pursues coordinated goals and implementation paths and the description of a document corresponds to the current status of all other documents. Correctness is the absence of mistakes.

application

The criteria for document quality are used in the so-called document review in project management to check work results. If the quality of a point in the document is criticized, it must be explained why which criterion is being violated. This makes it easier for the author to make corrections, in particular because employees from completely different work areas work together in the project. May not have developed a common language yet.