23.8. DEVELOPMENT OF STANDARDS AND TEMPLATES

A critical component of any PO is the development of project management standards. Standards foster teamwork by creating a common language. However, developing excessive standards in the form of policies and procedures may be a mistake because it may not be possible to create policies and procedures that cover every possible situation on every possible project. In addition, the time, money, and people required to develop rigid policy and procedure standards would make PO implementation unlikely because of head-count requirements.

Forms and checklists can be prepared in a template format such that the information can be used on a multitude of projects. Templates should be custom-designed for a specific organization rather than copied from another organization that may not have similar types of projects or a similar culture. Reusable templates should be prepared after the organization has completed several projects, whether successfully or unsuccessfully, and where lessons-learned information can be used for the development and enhancement of the templates.