Project documents may vary in size dependent on the complexity of a project. Greater complexity may require greater control, greater control may mean more documentation to assure the project is adequately controlled.
I once worked for someone who used the ‘window ledge test’ to determine if he should bother looking at the documentation prepared by the project manager. He would place the printed document on his window ledge and if it happened to be blown away by a gush of wind he would conclude it was not worthy of review.
I’m sure you would agree this is not a sensible way to determine if the project manager has given adequate thought on the planning and control of the project.
The thickness of the project documentation does not matter, the quality of the information within the document however does.
There are no rules stopping a project manager from using bullet points and diagrams to streamline their documentation. In a recent audit of a portfolio of projects all the projects where of different complexities though the level of documentation was about the same. After comparing documents it seemed like some of the project managers were guilty of the ‘copy and paste’ sin: ‘if it’s in my colleague’s document it’s then good enough for my project documentation’. This is not always true. Clever project managers scale their documentation according to the risk, nature and value of the project. Comparing project documentation for ideas may be a good way to improve the management of your project but to reproduce pages that may add very little value to the management of your project runs the risk of subjecting others to ‘death by documentation’ and delaying senior management decision making. Creating documentation that adds little value to the management of the project is an unnecessary and a time consuming task. Project management methods like PRINCE2 offer a set of project documents to help capture and communicate project information, however in the case of PRINCE2 it is not a document based project management method, but a ‘process based’ method. In summary the application of project management processes is always mandatory and documents created to aid with the application of these processes should be scaled up or down according to the complexity of the project.