Notes - Record Date & Source

Who & When: All your notes should specify who said what and when they said it

Who, what and when?

Some PjMs (Project Managers) do a good job recording what was said but not who or when that comment was made. This creates the problem of figuring out how long a task has been open or if notes are too cryptic, who we can contact to understand the task.

As you can see from the above screenshot, I always include three pieces of info in the notes tab of MS Project:

• What was the comment made about the task?
• Who was the source of the info?
• When did he make the info?

Keeping the notes tab well-documented is actually not time-consuming at all. It takes me less than 30 minutes a day per project to ensure all active tasks are updated (see Update Daily).

Another benefit of this tab is that it proves extremely valuable whenever projects are transitioned to different PjMs. There's been times when I've handed my project over to a new PjM. And while I dial into the status call to support the new PjM, because of the notes tab, the new PjM is able to conduct the weekly call without any help from me. The notes tab provides a rich source of high-level info for PjMs to get up to speed on a task very quickly.

On the other hand, when I take over projects, I have to hold multiple knowledge-transfer sessions with the team to get context on the hundreds of line items in a schedule.