Purpose:

The Project Initiation Documents (PID) purpose is to define the project to form the foundation for its management and to assess its overall success. The PID defines the project’s direction and scope, and it serves as the ‘contract’ between the project manager and the project board (along with the stage plan).

The PID is primarily used for three purposes:

• Before asking the project board to make any major commitment to the project, ensure that it has a solid foundation.
• serve as a foundational document against which the project board and project manager can evaluate progress, issues, and ongoing viability concerns
• provide a single point of reference for the project so that people joining the ‘temporary organization’ can quickly and easily learn about it and how it is managed.

The PID is a living product in that it should always reflect the project’s current status, plans, and controls. At the end of each management stage, its component products will need to be updated and re-baselined as needed to reflect the current state of its constituent parts.

The version of the PID that was used to gain project authorization is saved as the baseline against which performance will be measured when the project is closed.

PMDonkey Project Initiation Document (PID) Template.