Field Guide · PPPM · 2026-07-12
An overview of the Claude Code Project Process Guide (v1.2), written for project managers who have never treated code as a working tool. The short version: you do not need to become a programmer. The guide is a project management process that happens to produce software, and the skills it depends on are the ones you already have.
Claude Code is an AI assistant that reads plain English instructions and carries them out on your computer: creating files, writing and running code, tracking changes, and publishing finished work. You type "Create a project folder with an archive and a release subfolder" and it happens. No command syntax is required of you at any point.
The guide is explicit about the division of labor: you decide what to build; Claude executes. The skills that determine success are breaking problems into steps, defining success precisely, and testing results critically. That is a project manager's core competence, not a developer's.
Four tools appear throughout the guide. None of them requires prior experience.
| Tool | What it is | Project-office equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| VS Code | A free editor where your project files live and where you work | The workspace |
| Claude Code | The AI assistant that turns your instructions into working software | The specialist you direct |
| GitHub | A website that stores the project, its full change history, and its releases | The system of record |
| The terminal | A text channel for giving the computer direct commands (optional) | Going direct instead of delegating |
The guide offers two working modes. Option A, the Claude Code desktop app, requires no terminal at all: you type instructions and Claude handles everything internally. Option B pairs the Claude Code extension with the VS Code terminal for more visibility into each step. You can start with A and switch freely.
The heart of the guide is a documentation discipline, and every piece of it maps to a practice you use now. The names change; the logic does not.
| PM practice | Guide artifact | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| Change control | CHANGE_LOG.md | Every change gets a numbered entry with the files affected and exact reversal steps. Nothing changes silently. |
| Prioritized backlog | Backlog.md | Requests are queued at P0 (critical) through P3 (nice-to-have). Before any change, Claude asks: implement now, or backlog? |
| Definition of done | Acceptance criteria | Every backlog item records how you will know it is done and correct, written before work starts. This prevents work that is technically correct but answers the wrong question. |
| Quality audits | QC rounds (QC.md) | Recurring checks for consistency, dead code, stale references, and security issues, logged with sequential numbers and resolutions. |
| Risk management | Security practices | Credentials live in one excluded file and never appear in chat. Files are archived before deletion. An automated security review runs before publishing. |
| Knowledge management | DESIGN_NOTES.md | A single living document records what every file does, which decisions were made, and which alternatives were rejected and why. |
| Effort tracking | EFFORT_INVESTMENT.md | Session time and delivered changes are summarized at milestones. |
Version 1.2 of the guide adds a design-first phase, grounded in Dave Rensin's Elephant-Goldfish Model of AI-assisted development. The central claim: when an AI can implement anything quickly, the design document replaces source code as the highest-leverage artifact. Quality of thinking before the build determines quality of the build. For a project manager, this is planning before execution, formalized into five gates.
The guide's most important safety note is behavioral, not technical: Claude executes instructions literally and immediately. It does not second-guess your intent. Ask it to delete files and it deletes them. Vague instructions produce actions that may be technically correct but not what you meant. The mitigations are habits any PM will recognize as scope and change discipline:
.env file that never leaves your machine, and refer to them by name.The guide also flags a subtler risk: over long sessions an AI drifts toward agreeing with you. It supplies a reset prompt that tells the assistant its highest use is to challenge your thinking. Managing that drift is part of effective use, and it matters most during planning.
The guide recommends starting with something that solves a problem you already understand, affects only you, and has a one-sentence definition of success: "This is done when it can [X]." Just as important is knowing when not to build:
| Code when | Do not code when |
|---|---|
| The exact tool does not exist | A free tool already solves the problem |
| Existing tools charge for something simple | The problem only needs solving once |
| You need specific behaviour | Maintenance will exceed the value |
| You want to learn | An existing solution is close enough |
That is a build-versus-buy decision, and the guide's summary line belongs on a wall: a 10-line solution that works is always better than a 1000-line solution that almost works. Process depth scales with the project: a first project needs only a change log and backlog; the full process applies from the third project on.
The setup path in the guide, condensed. Steps 1 through 4 are one-time installs; step 6 automates everything after that.
.env file in your project folder; this is the only credential Claude needs to publish on your behalf./new-project, select Mode A, and Claude builds the folders, the archive documents, the exclusions file, and (optionally) the GitHub repository for you.CLAUDE.md, DESIGN_NOTES.md, and CHANGE_LOG.md and ask it to report project state before continuing. If the documents are current, recovery takes under a minute. Current documentation is the continuity plan.