Trends Report

Are Your Project Teams Living In "Template Hell?"

Trim The Fat By Designing Lean Templates For Pragmatic Use

March 20th, 2009
MG
Mary Gerush
With contributors:
Mike Gilpin , David D'Silva , Dave West

Summary

Project templates provide patterns for project deliverables, serving to increase understanding, save time, and improve the quality of project outcomes. But while the value of templates is obvious, some project management practitioners approach their creation and use in an old-fashioned way, neglecting the consumers' needs, injecting unnecessary complexity, and rigidly structuring template use. Commonly, project teams in these organizations claim to be in "template hell": They spend more time on documentation than on delivery of working software. By taking a lean approach to designing and using templates, you can maximize their value and minimize waste. Evaluate your templates for their necessity, fit-to-purpose, flexibility, and usage. Replace them with lighter-weight communication methods where possible and redesign, buy, or borrow to round out a strong, practical template suite.

Want to read the full report?

Contact us to become a client

This report is available for individual purchase ($1495).

Forrester helps business and technology leaders use customer obsession to accelerate growth. That means empowering you to put the customer at the center of everything you do: your leadership strategy, and operations. Becoming a customer-obsessed organization requires change — it requires being bold. We give business and technology leaders the confidence to put bold into action, shaping and guiding how to navigate today's unprecedented change in order to succeed.