Gokhan Gureser
PMP, LSS MBB, ASQ CSSBB
Continuous Improvement Expert
Scope Management
Scope ​is the work that will be done in the project.
Scope is the work that will is to be done in the project. Out-of-scope is the work that is not included in project work. Basically, when you define scope you draw the border line of the project. It is probably most important PM topic to manage scope and maintain the scope achievable and challenging. You can understand easily whether a particular activity is project work or not.
Scope influence other constraints
Scope is a constraint and any change in scope might influence other constraints such as cost, time, quality. For instance, if top management wants to add a new work into your project, you need to analyse the impact of this new work to schedule, cost and quality of deliverables and project. Most probably, this new scope will require more resources or time and so cost, or will cause diminishing quality as you will do more work with same reosurces. Eventually, to add and subtract scope is not healthy especially if it doubles objective or can be managed operationally or with a particular project.
Project Scope must be secured by sponsor and PM. A good Project Manager maintain scope focused on and around project objective.
Product Scope and Project Scope
There are two types of scope that PM need to manage, product and project scope.
Scope Management starts with planning scope and creating a scope management plan as a part of project management plan. Planning is everything, if you can not plan you cannot do. If you do not plan scope you will never know if any activity is included in project or not. In the end your project will enlarge too much to handle and unclassified.
How you will plan Scope?
Planning is tough!
Anyways, Do not worry, I will give you the formula.
PM need to plan 3 stages in scope. First you plan, how to plan your scope, then how you will manage it and finally how to control this scope.
Yes, it somehow sounds bizarre but PM should plan first how to plan, in any stage. It means, which tools PM will use to plan, how scope is planned and how you will get teammates' contribution in planning stages, who will contribute planning scope.
Then, PM should write down how he/she will manage the scope and finally how to control and monitor it.
Collect Requirements
After planning your scope, you will collect requirements from your stakeholders.
Who are stakeholders?
You can find them in Stakeholder register, if you properly manage the project.
You will have detailed description in stakeholder management and HR Management, here to point out briefly: Your stakeholders are the ones who influence or is influenced by the project.
- sponsor, top management
- related functional managers
- team members
- Project manager (yourself)
- subject matter experts
Go and speak up them regardoing their expectations and needs regarding the project. When you document the needs and expectations clearly, understandable and achievable, if possible quantitatively, it is called stakeholder requirements. Mostly requirements are related to:
- how work is done
- capability of the deliverables (dissolved in 2 minutes)
- product quality or performance (max. 5 defects per 10,000 piece)
- business processes (cost controlling must be done via controlling departments' procedures )
- compliance (meet HSE standards of industry and organization)
As you have got more stakeholders, you will have more requirements, naturally.
It is not easy to collect requirements, due to busy schedule of stakeholders. Thus, speak to them, contact them whenever you get the opportunity. To collect requirements as early as possible will decrease project cost dramatically. Even one requirement, might retard all the processes because of late collection process.
You can use various tools to collect their expectations, such as focus groups, one-on-one interviews, facilitated workshops, Quality function deployment, brainstorming, mind mapping, multicriteria decision analysis, questinaire, surveys etc.
In the colection process, you will agree with stakeholders regarding acceptance criteria of the corresponsing requirement. For instance, if marketing department manager as a stakeholder says that "do you know. Product must compete with our competitors." You need to go deeper to understand his acceptance criteria and create acceptance criteria quantitatively or measurable if possible and get approval of all stakeholders. You acceptance criteria might be like this: " Does it make sense if we set it as reaching 100 km/h in 9 seconds." Stakeholder: " No, we expect at least 8.2 seconds due to last competitive analysis."
At the end of collection process, you need to write them down on a requirements documentation and convert it to a requirement matrix, which briefly shows the project requirements.
In this matrix, after writing requirements, it will help you a lot in the future if you prioritize, classify them, putting an acceptance criteria is essential. Each requirement must be linked to the objective of the project or business needs and strategy.
Prioritization must be made order of alligning best with business strategy, business case and needs, project scope, other constraints.
After collecting requirements, PM creates scope definition, and draws the border that differentiate project from the medium.
Create WBS
After scope statement is created, it is decomposed into managable work packages using WBS tools. WBS is work breakdown structure. It is essential PM document and helps you to organize your time, cost etc.
It gives a big picture of your project.
To create WBS, you decompose main deliverable into pieces, then, decompose once more, these pieces into smaller pieces until you feel it can be managable and predictable or outsourced.
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