I work in a small software company (1-50 Employees) as an Assistant Project Manager. I have been studying the PMP study notes for quite a while now and wondering if there are too many documents involved in a project; e.g. Project scope document, requirements traceability matrix, etc. Now, the projects we develop are mostly outsourced to us and the duration is mostly 3-6 months. We prepare only 2 documents, that is, a requirements document which describes all the requirements in detail and second, a technical design document providing all the technical design of the product we are developing. It has been working fine so far, we have had lots of successful projects with just these 2 documents.
Since the last few months, we have lost some customers, and in one case, the log of open issues was not maintained, and in another case, the communications plan was not laid properly. Which means we need to adopt some of the processes of PMBOK, but I do not think we can adopt all of these in our small projects. So what are the minimum essential documents to make (ie. WBS is mandatory) which will almost ensure the success of the project?