2nd Knowledge Area :

Project Scope Management

Importance of Good Project Scope Management

• 1995 CHAOS study cited user involvement, a clear project mission, a clear statement of requirements, and proper planning as being important for project success

• The program manager of Keller Graduate School of Management cites proper project definition and scope as the main reasons projects fail

What is Project Scope Management?

• Scope refers to – Product scope; the features and function that characterize a product,

service, or result– Project scope; the work that needs to be accomplished to deliver a product,

service, or result with the specified features and functions• 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

• Primarily concerned with defining and controlling what is and is not included in the project

• The project team and stakeholders must have the same understanding of what products will be produces as a result of a project and what processes will be used in producing them

• Project Scope Management processes includes :– Scope planning– Scope definition– Create WBS– Scope verification– Scope Control

Scope Planning

• The project management team documents these scope management decisions in the project scope management plan

• The project scope management plan is a planning tool describing how the team will define the project scope, develop the detailed project scope statement, define and develop the work breakdown structure, verify the project scope, and control the project scope

Scope Definition

• The preparation of a detailed project scope statement is critical to project success and builds upon the major deliverables, assumption, and constrains that are documented during project initiation in the preliminary project scope statement

• The project scope statement describes, in detail, the project’s deliverables and the work required to create those deliverables

• Also provides a common understanding of the project scope among all project stakeholders and describes the project’s major objectives

Requirements Discovery Methods• Requirements discovery – the process, used by team

project (systems analysts) of identifying or extracting system problems and solution requirements from the user community. Approaches include:

– Fact-finding – the process of collecting information about system

problems, opportunities, solution requirements, and priorities. • Sampling of existing documentation, reports, forms, databases, etc• Research of relevant literature• Observation of the current system• Questionnaires and surveys• Interviews

– Joint requirements planning (JRP) – the use of facilitated workshops to bring together all of the system owners, users, and analysts, and some systems designer and builders to jointly perform systems analysis.

• JRP is generally considered a part of a larger method called joint application development (JAD), a more comprehensive application of the JRP techniques to the entire systems development process.

Context Diagram

• A high-level DFD, with the proposed system shown as a single process box

• A boundary is drawn to indicate the scope of the proposed system

Technical Environment Model

• Represent the skills, the methods, the physical location, and task estimates

Create Work Breakdown Structure

• The WBS is a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team, to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables

• The WBS subdivides the project work into smaller, more manageable pieces of work, with each descending level of the WBS representing an increasingly detailed definition of the project work

• Good creating WBS– helps improve the accuracy of time, cost, and resource estimates– defines a baseline for performance measurement and project control– aids in communicating clear work responsibilities

WBS example

WBS organized by Phase

WBS organized by Product

Scope Verification

• Including process of obtaining the stakeholders formal acceptance of the completed project scope and associated deliverables

• Scope verification differs from quality control in that scope verification is primarily concerned with acceptance of the deliverables, while QC is primarily concerned with meeting the quality requirements specified for the deliverables

• The scope verification process documents those completed deliverables that have been accepted

Factors Causing IT Project Problems*

*Johnson, Jim, "CHAOS: The Dollar Drain of IT Project Failures," Application Development Trends, January 1995, www.stadishgroup.com/chaos.html

Factor RankLack of user input 1Incomplete requirements and specifications 2Changing requirements and specifications 3Lack of executive support 4Technology incompetence 5Lack of resources 6Unrealistic expectations 7Unclear objectives 8Unrealistic time frames 9New Technology 10

Suggestions for Improving User Input

• Insist that all projects have a sponsor from the user organization

• Have users on the project team• Have regular meetings• Deliver something to project users and

sponsor on a regular basis• Co-locate users with the developers

Suggestions for Reducing Incomplete and Changing

Requirements

• Develop and follow a requirements management process

• Employ techniques such as prototyping, use case modeling, and Joint Application Design to thoroughly understand user requirements

• Put all requirements in writing and current• Create a requirements management database• Provide adequate testing• Use a process for reviewing requested changes from a

systems perspective• Emphasize completion dates

Scope Control

• Project scope control is concerned with influencing the factors that create project scope changes and controlling that impact of those changes

• Scope control assures all requested changes and recommended corrective actions are processed through the project integrated change control process

• Also used to manage the actual changes when they occur and is integrated with the other control processes

Project Scope Management processes