“Managing Project Deliverables” Means What, Exactly?

By managing project deliverables, we mean the process by which the project work products are controlled. The work products can include anything resulting from project activities, including any deliverable, document, or project management item. And by control, we mean managing the changes to the actual work products themselves. The most common term for this process is configuration management. “Controlling a Project,” this process is related to the project change control system, yet it is different. The change control system manages changes to a critical success factor (time, cost, scope, and quality) for the project.

The exact nature and details of this process will vary by project and the types of deliverables involved. The project planning document that defines this process is generally called the configuration management plan.

Configuration management is often neglected because it is an unglamorous, mundane aspect of project management that requires a certain discipline to carry out. In addition, this area of project management tends to fall victim to many ill-advised assumptions and the notion that this is just common sense and will just happen automatically. Real-world experience would say otherwise. Especially in the digital age, if you do not think about where your project files will be stored, who has access to them, how they will be protected, how changes will be made, and how changes will be tracked, your project is carrying a significant risk—and in most cases, an unidentified risk.

In many organizations today, enterprise configuration management tools are being implemented to better protect and control all digital assets of the organization, especially documents. However, this movement is not universal across all industries or organizations yet, so you may likely still need to develop your own project-specific procedures to address the needs of your project.