NOTE: See also the “Downloads” section of the website for the Project Plan template.

The Project Plan Contents

Revision History Table

Like any important and constantly changing document the Project Plan should contain a “Revision History” table (see Exhibit 1). The purpose of the table is to record version number, version date, name of the person making the change and a short revision description.

Why should we keep a record of all the changes made to the document? First, one can expect to make up to several dozen revisions to a project plan during the planning and execution stages. Stakeholder feedback, customer-initiated updates and technical project team inspections act as a source of updates and modification to the document. By the same token, during the execution stage change requests, various risks and other events may have an impact on various aspects of the project. Committing all of this information to the memory of the project manager is probably not the most efficient use of his brainpower.

Secondly, people have the tendency to save the files they receive via e-mails to their computer hard drives. As a result they continue referring to the older versions of the document while the newer, “fresher” versions have already been posted in the project documentation repositories. Therefore, “what version of the document are you looking at?” is one of the most frequently asked questions in conversations between the project manager and the project stakeholders.

Exhibit 1

Version Number	Version Date	Added By:	Revision Description
0.1	01-Sep-2009	John Smith	First draft of the document
0.2