It is not unusual to see the project team working on their toe to meet the unrealistic deadline due to callously defined scope. I had worked on such laborious and frantic project as a team member. However, I learned the important lesson that is scope of the project must be planned, clearly defined, agreed by the all the stakeholders and have some mechanism and plan for controlling change in scope throughout the life cycle of the project. The scope of a project specifies what the solution will and will not do. The features that the customer considers mandatory in the solution define the scope.
Many project get delayed or scrapped due to vague and incomplete project scope. Due to ambiguous, incomplete and transient scope nature, sometimes team have no clue as what needs to be included in the final release or what should be left out as client keep on changing the requirements. If Project has no collaborative scope control planning, then frequent change in requirement also put drastic impact on the cost and schedule of the project. It may also lead to conflict with client over the requirements included in the project and future business with the client could also be affected.
I guess you got a fair amount of idea why project scope management is an essential. Now you must be thinking how to perform project scope management and how it will help us to resolve the issues, which could arise due to uncollaborative and ambiguous scope. There is no rocket science needed to perform Project scope management. As PMBOK precisely states, Project Scope Management includes the processes required to ensure that the project includes all the work required and only the work required, to complete the project successfully. It takes care of the customer needs, wants and requirements. It is primarily concerned with defining and controlling what is and is not included in the project. It ensures that project will be delivering what has been asked and approved by stakeholders/sponsors, no more, no less.
Project Scope management includes following processes:
Scope Planning:
Project Scope management is the heart of Project Management plan. It can be the defined in the of Project Management plan. Project Management define the scope management plan that documents how the project scope will be defined, verified, controlled, and how the work breakdown structure (WBS) will be created and defined.
The project scope management plan can be informal and broadly framed or formal and highly detailed, based on the needs of the project. There are many factors that can have a impact on Project scope management e.g. Enterprise environmental and Organizational Process. For example Organization may have different policies, procedures, tools, infrastructure, human resources that could affect how project scope is managed. Organizational factor like processes, formal and informal policies, guidelines that could also impact how project scope is planned.
So every organization have different way to do project scope planning but their goal and objective of having project scope planning is common.
Project Scope Management needs Tools and Techniques like Expert Judgment, template, Forms and standards to perform Project Scope Planning. Expert Judgment help in developing Project Scope Planning by utilizing their experience and skills with similar kind of the project in the past. Template could include work break down structure templates, scope management plan templates, project scope change control forms.
Project Scope Management planning should include following processes:
- A process that will have detailed project scope statement based upon preliminary project scope statement and requirement gathering and analyzing.
- A process that enables the creation of the Work Break Structure from the detailed project scope statement, and established how the WBS will be maintained and approved.
- A process that specified how formal verification and acceptance of the completed project deliverables will be obtained.
- A process to control how request for changes to the detailed project scope statement will be processed. This process is directly linked to the integrated change control process.
Scope Definition:
Scope definition is primarily concerned with what is and is not included in the project. It involves taking the preliminary project scope statement created during the initiating process group and fleshing it out to include all the needs of the stakeholders. Scope Definitions take into account constraints and assumptions. The result, or output, is the project scope statement which is used to manage and measure project performance against.
Detailed Project Scope statement is builds upon the major deliverables, assumptions, and constraints that are documented during project initiation in the preliminary project scope statement. While defining the scope of the project, you identify the requirements that will be addressed by the various versions of the solution.
Project Scope statement also provide the common understanding of the project scope among all project stakeholders and describes the project ‘s major objectives. It also enables the project team to perform more detailed planning, guides the project team ‘s work during execution, and provides the baseline for evaluating whether requests for changes or additional work are contained within or outside the project boundaries.
The detailed project scope statement includes:
- Project Objective:
Project objective include the measurable success criteria of the project. Project objectives can also include cost, schedule, and quality targets. Project may have a wide variety of business, cost, schedule, technical and quality objective.
- StakeHolder Analysis
This process makes sure that the stake holder’s needs, wants and expectations are turned into requirements.
- Product Analysis
The purpose of the product analysis is to analyze the objective stated by the customer or sponsor and turn them into tangible requirements. For example, the project team is asked to “improve” the product. In product analysis, the project team might come up with specific requirements that meets the need to “improve” the product.
- Product scope description:
It should describe the characteristics of the product, service, or result that the project was undertaken to create. While the form and substance of the characteristics will vary, the scope description should always provide sufficient details to support later project scope planning.
- Project requirements:
It describe the conditions or capabilities that must be met or possessed by the deliverables of the project to satisfy a contract, standard, specification or other formally imposed documents. All of Stakeholder ‘s needs, wants, and expectations are translated into prioritized requirements.
- Project boundaries:
Identifies, generally what is included within the project. It should also states explicitly what is excluded from the project, if a stakeholder might assume that a particular product, service, or result could be a component of the project.
- Project deliverables
Project Deliverables that comprises the product or services of the project as well as ancillary results such as project management reports and documentation. It should define the process and criteria for accepting completed product.
- Constraints:
It lists and describe the specific project constraints associated with the project scope. For example, a predefined budget or any imposed dates ( schedule milestones ) that are issued by the customer or performing organization are included.
- Assumptions:
It should also define a list of expected assumptions with the project scope and the potential impact of those assumptions if they prove to be false. Assumption can be Fund limitation, Project specification, Cost estimate, schedule milestone, initial defined risks, approval requirement etc. It describes the process to manage the requested changes to the project management plan and its subsidiary plans may be developed during the Scope Definition process.
Creating Work Break Structure:
The Work Break structure all you to subdivide the major projects into more manageable components and organizes and defines the total scope of the project. The WBS contains the deliverables-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work executed by the team to accomplish the goal and objective of the project. It does not include the day-to-day activities or tasks assigned for the team because activities and tasks tend to be flexible and keep on changing. The WBS represents the work specified in the current approved project scope statement and assists the stakeholders in viewing the deliverables of the project. The planned work contained within the lowest level WBS components, which are called work packages, can be scheduled, cost, estimated, monitored and controlled.
In the WBS, following rules are followed:
- It is created with the help of the team.
- The first level is completed before the project is broken down further.
- Each level of the WBS is a smaller piece of the level above.
- The entire project is included in each of the highest levels of the WBS. Eventually some levels will be broken down further than others.
- Includes only work needed to create deliverables.
- Work not in the WBS is not part of the project.
- Continues breaking down the project until you reach what are called work packages pieces that:
- Can be realistically and confidently estimated
- Can not be logically subdivided further
- Can be completed quickly
- Having a meaningful conclusion and deliverable
- Can be completed without interruption ( without the need for more information)
The benefits of the using a WBS are:
- Helps to prevent work from slipping through the cracks
- Provides the project team with an understanding of where their pieces fit into the overall project management plan and gives them an indication of the impact of their work on the project as a whole.
Scope Verification:
Scope verification is actually checking the work against the project management plan and the project scope management plan, WBS, WBS dictionary, and then meeting with the customer to gain formal acceptance of deliverables. Scope verification is the process of obtaining the stake holder’s formal acceptance of the completed project scope and associated deliverables. Verifying the project scope includes reviewing deliverables to ensure that each is completed satisfactorily. If the project is terminated early, the project scope verification process should establish and document the level and extent of completion. Scope verification differs from quality control in that scope verification is primarily concerned with the acceptance of the deliverables, while quality control is primarily concerned with meeting the quality requirements specified for the deliverables. Quality control is generally performed before scope verification, but these two processes can be performed in parallel.
Scope Control:
Project scope control is concerned with influencing the factors that create project scope changes and controlling the impact of those changes. Scope control assures all requested changes and recommended corrective actions are processed through the project Integrated Change Control process. Project Scope control is also used to manage the actual changes when they occur and is integrated with the other control processes. Uncontrolled changes are often referred to as project scope creep. Change is inevitable, thereby mandating some type of change control process. To control a project, one needs to focus on controlling scope as well as looking for the impact of scope changes on other knowledge areas and the impact of other changes on scope (integrated change control). Remember that scope control is extremely proactive.
Scope control involves following the change control process set up in the project scope management plan. To control scope, one first needs to have a clear definition of what is the scope of the project; the project scope statement, WBS and WBS dictionary. One then has to measure scope performance against the scope baseline. Once that information is known, the next step is to determine if any updates to the project management plan or the components of the scope baseline are needed, and what corrective and preventive actions should be recommended.
Project scope change control system, documented in the project scope management plan, defines the procedures by which the project scope and product scope can be changed. The system includes the documentation, tracking system and approval levels necessary for authorizing changes. The scope change control system is integrated with any overall project management information system to control project scope. When the project is managed under a contract, the change control system also complies with relevant contractual provision.
If the approved change requests have an effect upon the project scope, then the project scope statement is revised and reissued to reflect the approved changes. The updated project scope statement becomes the new project scope baseline for future changes. If the approved change requests have an effect upon the project scope, then the WBS is revised and reissued to reflect the approved changes. If the approved change requests have an effect upon the project scope, then the WBS dictionary is revised and reissued to reflect the approved changes.
Many comprehensive articles on Project Management including scope management has also been published on www.pmhut.com.
If you want to learn Project scope management more in details, you may like to look at http://www.pmhut.com/category/change-management/ as well.
References :
- Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) 3rd Edition
- Rita Mulchay ’s PMP Exam Preparation 2005 5th Edition
- Analyzing requirements and defining Microsoft .Net solutions architecture
