6 Processes of Project Scope Management

6 Processes of Project Scope Management6 Processes of Project Scope ManagementProject scope management is what you do to make sure that your project includes all the work relevant to achieving the projects objectives (and not anything else). Its around controlling whats included in the project and what isnt. This article looks at the project scope management knowledge area from the book A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) Fifth Edition. This isnt the only way to define project scope management, but its a good starting point and will be very helpful to you if you are working towards your PMP certification. Plan Scope Management Process The point of doing this is to give you a scope management plan at the end of it. That sets out how you will define, manage, validate and control your projects scope. Putting the work in up front to define this gives you something to refer to later. You may find that you can use another projects scope management plan as a starting point, as scope management processes dont vary wildly between projects once your company has settled on a way of working that is successful for them. The result of this process is the scope management plan. This is part of your project management plan and includes How you will prepare a detailed scope statementHow you will create your Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) from the scope statementHow you are going to maintain and approve that WBSHow you will get formal acceptance of the projects deliverablesHow you will manage changes to the scope The document doesnt have to be incredibly detailed or very formal it simply has to be fit for purpose. Collect Requirements Process In this process, youllwork out what your stakeholders want from the project. Once you have outlined your big idea, you need to document the requirements and manage your stakeholders expectations. This is important because often what they ask for isnt realistic or achievable given other project constrai nts, like cost. The output of your requirements collection work is a documented set of requirements. This should be as comprehensive as possible and will normally include several categories of requirements such as Functional and non-functional requirementsStakeholder requirements such as reporting requirementsSupport and training requirementsBusiness requirementsProject requirements such as levels of service or quality Youll also document the dependencies, assumptions, and constraints that specifically relate to requirements. Define Scope Process Heres where you take your requirements and turn them into a detailed description of the product or service that your project is going to create. Youll end up with a project scope statement which you can refer to during the project. It will include a list of whats in scope and whats out of scope. Thats important because often people wont remember what is specifically excluded and come back and ask you to do work on those areas. Any inclu sions will have to go through change control. Create Work Breakdown Structure Process This process enables you to turn your list of requirements into a structured vision of what you need to do. The main work here is breaking down big tasks into smaller, manageable chunks. The result of this process is a WBS and it can be a very helpful tool. If you dont think visually, then you can achieve the same result by creating a list. Validate Scope Process The Validate Scope process isnt, as you may think, getting business stakeholders to sign off your WBS. Its about making sure that you have a process in place for getting sign off for your deliverables when the time comes. Its worth putting this structure in place so that you dont have any questions about who is going to approve a deliverable or what criteria they are going to use to say it is complete. Once the process is complete, youll have accepted deliverables, approved by whoever needs to approve them. Control Scope Process The Control Scope process is the brde one in the project scope management knowledge area. It relates to making sure that there is effective change control if the scope needs to change. It also covers tracking your project with a scope hat on to check that it is going to deliver what you think it will. These 6 processes make up the project scope management knowledge are in the PMBOK Guide Fifth Edition.