Chapter 3�Project Scope Management

Chapter Objectives

By the end of this chapter students will be able to:

• Understand the importance of good project scope management
• Explain the scope planning and definition process
• Discuss the approaches for creating a work breakdown structure
• Explain the importance of validating scope and how it relates to defining and controlling scope
• Understand the importance of controlling scope and approaches for preventing scope-related problems on IS/IT projects

Project Scope Management - Introduction

Why do Client Requirements Change in IS/IT Projects and How can we Manage Expectations?

• It is not uncommon for scope to grow out of control even when a properly completed SoW was agreed on early in the planning process.
• Two types of change in scope are common
• Scope creep: is the tendency for the project scope to expand over time due to changing requirements, specifications, and priorities.
• Feature creep is the uncontrolled addition of technical features to a system under development without regard to schedule and budget.
• Factors for scope change:
• an omission in defining initial scope (as documented in SoW)
• a misunderstanding of the initial scope.

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• (the desired document is more complicated than originally communicated or perceived)
• an external event such as government regulations that create new requirements
• organizational changes, such as mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships, that create new business problems and opportunities
• availability of better technology
• shifts in planned technology that force unexpected and significant changes to the business organization, culture and/or process
• the user or management simply wanting the system to do more than they originally requested or agreed to
• management reducing the funding for the project or imposing an earlier deadline

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Project Scope Management

• Defining the scope of a project is one of the most important and most difficult aspects of project 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 required to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully.
• It is primarily concerned with defining and controlling what is and is not included in the project.
• It ensures that the project team and stakeholders have the same understanding of what products the project will produce and what processes the project team will use to produce them.

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• In the project context, scope can refer to:
• Product scope: the features and functions that characterize a product, service, or result; and/or
• Project scope: the work performed to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions.
• This sometimes is viewed as including product scope.
• Completion of the project scope is measured against the project management plan.
• Completion of the product scope is measured against the product requirement.
• The Project Scope Management processes need to be well integrated with the other Knowledge Area processes, so that the work of the project will result in delivery of the specified product scope.

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Scope Management Processes

• Plan Scope Management: the process of creating a scope management plan that documents how the project scope will be defined, validated, and controlled.
• Collect Requirements: defining and documenting the features and functions of the products produced during the project as well as the processes used for creating them.
• Define Scope: reviewing the project charter, requirements documents, and organizational process assets to create a scope statement.
• Create WBS: subdividing project deliverables and project work into smaller, more manageable components.
• Validate Scope: formalizing acceptance of the completed project deliverables.
• Control Scope: controlling changes to project scope throughout the life of the project.

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Project Scope Management Summary

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3.1 Plan Scope Management�

• key benefit: it provides guidance and direction on how scope will be managed throughout the project.
• The development of the scope management plan and the detailing of the project scope begin with the analysis of information contained in the
• project charter, subsidiary plans,
• historical information from organizational process assets
• any other relevant enterprise environmental factors
• Plan scope management - Outputs:
• Scope management plan
• describes how the scope will be defined, developed, monitored, controlled, and verified.
• Requirements management plan
• describes how requirements will be analyzed, documented, and managed.

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3.2 Collecting Requirements

• Involves determining, managing & documenting stakeholder needs and requirements to meet project objectives.
• Needs must be decomposed into requirements.
• A requirement is a condition or capability that must be met or possessed by a system, product, service, result, or component to satisfy an agreement or other formally imposed specification.
• Requirements become the foundation for WBS.
• Cost, schedule, quality planning, and sometimes procurement are all based upon requirements.
• For some IS/IT 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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Requirements Classification

• Business requirements: high-level needs of the organization such as the business issue and opportunity, and reasons to undertake the project.
• Stakeholder requirement: needs of stakeholder (group)
• Solution requirement: features, functions, and characteristics of the product, service, or result
• Functional requirements: the behaviors of the product such as processes, data, and interactions with the product.
• Non-functional requirements: the environmental conditions or qualities required for the product to be effective. Eg. Reliability, safety, security.
• Transition requirements: temporary capabilities such as data conversion and training.
• Project requirements: the actions, processes, or other conditions the project needs to meet.
• Quality requirements: any condition or criteria to validate the successful completion of the deliverable or project requirements.

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Methods for Collecting Requirements

• Interviewing
• Focus groups and facilitated workshops and
• Using group creativity and decision-making techniques
• Questionnaires and surveys
• Observation:
• especially for projects that involve improving work processes and procedures.
• Prototyping
• Document analysis
• Context diagrams:
• help to clarify the interfaces and boundaries of a project or process
• Benchmarking:
• generating ideas by comparing specific project practices or product characteristics to those of other projects or products inside or outside the performing organization.

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Documenting Requirements

• Requirements documents are often generated by software and include text, images, diagrams, videos, and other
• A requirements management plan describes how project requirements will be analyzed, documented, and managed
• 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.

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Sample Requirements Traceability Matrix

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Table 3.1. – Sample RTM

3.3 Defining Scope

• It describes the product, service, or result boundaries by defining which of the requirements collected will be included in and excluded from the project scope.
• Good scope definition is very important to project success
• improves the accuracy of time, cost, and resource estimates,
• As time progresses, the scope of a project should become more clear and specific.
• An up-to-date project scope statement is an important document for developing and confirming a common understanding of the project scope.
• insuring customer satisfaction and preventing scope creep.
• it defines a baseline for performance measurement and project control, and
• it aids in communicating clear work responsibilities.

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• Although contents vary, project scope statements include,
• A product scope description, product user acceptance criteria, and detailed information on all project deliverables
• other scope-related information, such as the project boundaries, constraints and assumptions.
• supporting documents, such as product specifications or corporate policies, that will affect what products or services are produced or purchased.
• IS/IT software projects functional and design specifications

Defining Scope - OUTPUT

• Project scope statement includes:
• Project scope description (progressively elaborated)
• Acceptance criteria; Project deliverables
• Project boundaries/ exclusions
• Project constraints and Project assumptions

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3.4 Creating the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

• 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.

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Sample Intranet WBS Organized by Product

Figure Sample Intranet WBS Organized by Phase

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Intranet Gantt Chart Organized by Project Management Process Groups

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Approaches to Developing WBSs�

• Using guidelines: some organizations, like the DOD, provide guidelines for preparing WBSs.
• The analogy approach: review WBSs of similar projects and tailor to your project.
• The top-down approach: start with the largest items of the project and break them down.
• The bottom-up approach: start with the specific tasks & roll them up
• Mind-mapping approach: uses branches radiating out from a core idea to structure thoughts and ideas.

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Fig: Sample Mind-Mapping Approach for Creating a WBS

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.
• The approved project scope statement and its WBS and WBS dictionary form the scope baseline, which is used to measure performance in meeting project scope goals.
• 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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• 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.

3.5 Validate 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 verification involves formal acceptance of the completed project scope by the stakeholders.
• Acceptance is often achieved by a customer inspection and then sign-off on key deliverables.

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3.6 Controlling Scope

• Scope control involves monitoring the status of the project and product scope and managing changes to the scope baseline - a challenge on many IS/IT projects.
• Allows scope baseline to be maintained throughout the project.
• 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.
• Manage changes when they occur.
• Variance is the difference between planned and actual performance.

Best Practices for Avoiding Scope Problems

1. Keep the scope realistic: Don’t make projects so large that they can’t be completed. Break large projects down into a series of smaller ones.

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2. Involve users in project scope management: assign key users to the project team and give them ownership of requirements definition and scope verification.

3. Use off-the-shelf hardware and software whenever possible: Many IS/IT people enjoy using the latest and greatest technology, but business needs, not technology trends, must take priority.

4. Follow good project management processes: use well-defined processes for managing project scope and others aspects of projects.

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

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• 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
• Co-locate users with developers

Suggestions for Reducing Incomplete and Changing Requirements

• develop and follow a requirements management process
• use techniques such as prototyping, use case modeling, and JAD to get more user involvement
• put requirements in writing and keep them current
• create a requirements management database for documenting and controlling requirements
• provide adequate testing and conduct testing throughout the project life cycle

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• review changes from a systems perspective
• emphasize completion dates to help focus on what’s most important and allocate resources specifically for handling change requests/ enhancements.

Discussion Questions

2. What is involved in project scope management, and why is good project scope management so important on IT projects?
3. What is involved in collecting requirements for a project? Why is it often difficult to do?
4. Explain why it is often so difficult to develop a WBS.
5. What is the main technique used for validating scope? Give an example.
6. Using examples, describe a project that suffered from scope creep.
• Could it have been avoided? How?
• Can scope creep be a good thing? When?
• What can organizations do to successfully manage inevitable changes in scope that are good for business?

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