Project Initiation: definition of the scope, which, in the case of electronic discovery, includes event time frames, players, issues in the dispute, and where all the information is located. Also includes identification of the Project Manager, and who makes decisions for the client

Project Planning: work breakdown structure, time and cost estimates, risk analysis and mitigation approaches, team roles and responsibilities, schedules, internal resources (firm and client), external resources (contractors), acquisition plan for external resources and/or tools/solutions, documentation requirements, process control requirements, quality assurance processes, team communications and progress reporting

Execution: specific task assignments, staffing and back-fill of employees diverted to e-discovery project, acquisition/procurement of tools, systems, services and human resources, development of processing steps, documentation (processing manuals), reporting progress against plan, problem reporting and analysis, refinement of cost estimates and schedule as team gathers further information about the data and the documents, quality assurance steps

Monitoring: tracking progress against the budget, schedule and expected results, batch management/flow control, team updates, ongoing lessons learned/process refinement, communications with client and senior lawyer, options analysis, recommendations to management when deviations occur, documentation of decisions taken and rationale

Project closeout: final reports of expenses and schedule. Records of production, file locations, final scope of data/documents included in the project, completion of contracts (i.e. confirming receipt of all deliverables)

Useful Project Management Links: