Lecture 3

Project Scope Management

SOW & Scope Statement

Instructor
Hamza Ejaz
 Learning Objectives
• Understand the importance of good project scope
management & describe the process of planning scope
management
• Discuss methods for collecting and documenting
requirements to meet stakeholder needs and
expectations in the scope definition process and
describe the contents of a project scope statement
• Discuss the process for creating a work breakdown
structure using the analogy, top-down, bottom-up, and
mind-mapping approaches
• Explain the importance of validating scope and how it
relates to defining and controlling scope
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 What is Project Scope Management?
• Scope refers to all the work involved in creating
the products of the project and the processes
used to create them
• A deliverable is a product produced as part of
a project, such as hardware or software,
planning documents, or meeting minutes
• Project scope management includes the
processes involved in defining and controlling
what is or is not included in a project

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Project Scope Management Summary

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 Planning Scope Management
• The project team uses expert judgment and
meetings to develop two important outputs:
the scope management plan and the
requirements management plan
• The scope management plan is a subsidiary
part of the project management plan

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Scope Management Plan Contents
• How to prepare a detailed project scope
statement
• How to create a WBS
• How to maintain and approve the WBS
• How to obtain formal acceptance of the
completed project deliverables
• How to control requests for changes to the
project scope
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 Requirements Management Plan
• The PMBOK® Guide, Sixth Edition, describes
requirements as “conditions or capabilities
that must be met by the project or present in
the product, service, or result to satisfy an
agreement or other formally imposed
specification”
• The requirements management plan
documents how project requirements will be
analyzed, documented, and managed
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 Collecting Requirements
• For some projects, it is helpful to divide
requirements development into categories
called elicitation, analysis, specification, and
validation
• It is important to use an iterative approach to
defining requirements since they are often
unclear early in a project

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 Methods for Collecting Requirements
• Interviewing
• Focus groups and facilitated workshops
• Using group creativity and decision-making techniques
• Questionnaires and surveys
• Observation
• Prototyping
• Benchmarking, or generating ideas by comparing specific
project practices or product characteristics to those of other
projects or products inside or outside the performing
organization, can also be used to collect requirements

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 Requirements Traceability Matrix
• A requirements traceability matrix (RTM) is a table that lists
requirements, various attributes of each requirement, and the
status of the requirements to ensure that all requirements are
addressed
• Sample entry in an RTM

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 Defining Scope
• Project scope statements should include at least a
product scope description, product user acceptance
criteria, and detailed information on all project
deliverables. It is also helpful to document other scope-
related information, such as the project boundaries,
constraints, and assumptions. The project scope
statement should also reference supporting documents,
such as product specifications
• As time progresses, the scope of a project should become
more clear and specific

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Sample Project Charter (partial)

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Table 5-3: Further Defining Project Scope

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 Creating the Work Breakdown Structure
(WBS)
• A WBS is a deliverable-oriented grouping of the work involved
in a project that defines the total scope of the project
• WBS is a foundation document that provides the basis for
planning and managing project schedules, costs, resources,
and changes
• Decomposition is subdividing project deliverables into smaller
pieces
• A work package is a task at the lowest level of the WBS
• The scope baseline includes the approved project scope
statement and its associated WBS and WBS dictionary

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Sample Intranet WBS
Organized by Product

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Sample Intranet WBS
Organized by Phase

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Intranet WBS and Gantt Chart in Microsoft
Project

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Intranet Gantt Chart Organized by Project
Management Process Groups

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 Approaches to Developing WBSs

1. The analogy approach: Review WBSs of similar

projects and tailor to your project
2. The top-down approach: Start with the largest
items of the project and break them down
3. The bottom-up approach: Start with the specific
tasks and roll them up
4. Mind-mapping approach: Mind mapping is a
technique that uses branches radiating out from
a core idea to structure thoughts and ideas

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Sample Mind-Mapping Approach for
Creating a WBS

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Gantt Charts With WBS Generated From a
Mind Map

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 The WBS Dictionary and Scope Baseline

• Many WBS tasks are vague and must be

explained more so people know what to do
and can estimate how long it will take and
what it will cost to do the work
• A WBS dictionary is a document that
describes detailed information about each
WBS item

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Sample WBS Dictionary Entry

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Advice for Creating a WBS and WBS Dictionary
• A unit of work should appear at only one place in
the WBS.
• The work content of a WBS item is the sum of the
WBS items below it
• A WBS item is the responsibility of only one
individual, even though many people may be
working on it
• The WBS must be consistent with the way in
which work is actually going to be performed; it
should serve the project team first, and other
purposes only if practical

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 Advice for Creating a WBS and WBS
Dictionary (cont’d)
• Project team members should be involved in
developing the WBS to ensure consistency and buy-
in
• Each WBS item must be documented in a WBS
dictionary to ensure accurate understanding of the
scope of work included and not included in that item
• The WBS must be a flexible tool to accommodate
inevitable changes while properly maintaining
control of the work content in the project according
to the scope statement

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 What Went Wrong?
• A project scope that is too broad and grandiose
can cause severe problems
– Scope creep and an overemphasis on technology: In
2001, McDonald’s fast-food chain initiated a project
to create an intranet that would connect its
headquarters with all of its restaurants to provide
detailed operational information in real time. After
spending $170 million on consultants and initial
implementation planning, McDonald’s realized that
the project was too much to handle and terminated it

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 Validating Scope
• It is very difficult to create a good scope
statement and WBS for a project
• It is even more difficult to verify project scope
and minimize scope changes
• Scope validation involves formal acceptance of
the completed project deliverables
• Acceptance is often achieved by a customer
inspection and then sign-off on key deliverables

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 Controlling Scope
• Scope control involves controlling changes to the
project scope
• Goals of scope control are to
– influence the factors that cause scope changes
– assure changes are processed according to procedures
developed as part of integrated change control, and
– manage changes when they occur
• Variance is the difference between planned and
actual performance

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 Suggestions for Improving User Input

• Develop a good project selection process and

insist that sponsors are from the user organization
• Have users on the project team in important roles
• Have regular meetings with defined agendas, and
have users sign off on key deliverables presented
at meetings
• Deliver something to users and sponsors on a
regular basis
• Don’t promise to deliver when you know you can’t

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 Suggestions for Reducing Incomplete and
Changing Requirements
• Develop and follow a requirements
management process
• Use techniques such as prototyping, use case
modeling to get more user involvement
• Put requirements in writing and keep them
current
• Create a requirements management database
for documenting and controlling requirements

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 Suggestions for Reducing Incomplete and
Changing Requirements (cont’d)
• Provide adequate testing and conduct testing
throughout the project life cycle
• Review changes from a systems perspective
• Emphasize completion dates to help focus on
what’s most important
• Allocate resources specifically for handling
change requests/enhancements

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 Lecture Summary
• Project scope management includes the processes
required to ensure that the project addresses all the work
required, and only the work required, to complete the
project successfully
• Main processes include
– Define scope management
– Collect requirements
– Define scope
– Create WBS
– Validate scope
– Control scope

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Questions?

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