Documentation and Records
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[edit] Problem
Maybe you're recording an album, but forgot the chords to the last few songs you were to record. Maybe you're building a house, but haven't constructed blueprints for the wrap-around porch with intricate lattice trim. Maybe you are running a bookstore, and when you take on the first-time project of inventorying your books, realize you have no records of what books you have. Regardless of the circumstance, keeping track of your project by documenting your work and the financial and organizational aspects of your project is highly important.
[edit] Context
Documenting your project can mean many different things: keeping track of expenditures, establishing a database of people involved with the project and ways to contact them, filming the progress of a project for posterity, keeping a daily journal of problems, challenges and things you've learned to help you troubleshoot later on, etc.
[edit] Discussion
A well-documented project has several advantages over an undocumented one. First, if there is a problem you can look back and see exactly were it started, how long it took to come to light and be more likely to be able to prevent it in the feature. Second, if you are going to have any chance of doing a proper debriefing at the end of a project you had better have documentation to go off of or you will find yourself guessing how well your group did rather then knowing. Documenting your project can be as simple as taking notes in a notebook, or as complex as assigning a team of people to the task of documenting the project through photography, video and writing. The more complex and interesting a project is, the more likely people will want to see how it was constructed. Choose a complexity of documentation that uniquely reflects and supports your project.
[edit] Solution
Even if the documentation of your project is only a scrapbook, you'll at least have something to look at to remind you of all the unique experiences you had in working on your project. And even if you only save your receipts in a shoebox, you'll be glad you kept at least some sort of records when the IRS questions you're finances.
[edit] References
[edit] External Links
Related Patterns: Brainstorming & Ideating, Evaluation, Milestones, Research
