IT Project

Management
Project Scope
Management
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
• Explain 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

Objectives (contd.)
• 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 information technology
(IT) projects
• Describe how software can assist in project scope management

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

Project Scope Management Processes

• Planning scope: determining how the project’s scope
• and requirements will be managed
• Collecting requirements: defining and documenting the features and
functions of the products produced during the project as well as the
processes used for creating them
• Defining scope: reviewing the project charter, requirements documents,
and organizational process assets to create a scope statement
• Creating the WBS: subdividing the major project deliverables into
smaller, more manageable components
• Validating scope: formalizing acceptance of the project deliverables
• Controlling scope: controlling changes to project scope throughout the
life of the project
Figure 5-1. Project Scope Management
Summary
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

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

Requirements Management Plan

• The PMBOK® Guide, Fifth 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

What Went Right?

• Projected number of jobs for business analysts expected to increase
19 percent by 2022
• Only 49 percent of survey respondents had the resources in place to
do requirements management properly and 53 percent failed to use
a formal process to validate requirements
• There are several certifications available for business analysis to
help meet this need
Collecting Requirements
• For some 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
Figure 5-2. Relative Cost to Correct a
Software Requirement Defect
Best Practice
• Book called “How Google Tests Software” describes how Google
changed their culture as quality rests on the shoulders of those
writing the code; they don’t rely on testers to ensure quality
• Google also does not believe in fads of buzzwords, including Agile

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
Statistics on Requirements for Software
Projects (2011 Survey)*
• Eighty-eight percent of the software projects involved enhancing
existing products instead of creating new ones
• Eighty-six percent of respondents said that customer satisfaction
was the most important metric for measuring the success of
development projects
• Eighty-three percent of software development teams still use
Microsoft Office applications such as Word and Excel as their main
tools to communicate requirements

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
• Table 5-1. Sample entry in an RTM
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
Table 5-2. Sample Project Charter (partial)
Table 5-3: Further Defining Project Scope
Media Snapshot
➢ Inaccurate requirements gathering continues to be one of the main
causes of project failure
➢ For every dollar spent on projects and programs, 5.1 percent is
wasted due to poor requirements management
➢ Organizations need to develop people, processes, and culture to
improve requirements mangement
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
Figure 5-

3. Sample Intranet WBS Organized

by Product
Figure 5-
Figure 5-

4. Sample Intranet WBS Organized

Figure 5-
Figure 5-

5. Intranet WBS and Gantt Chart in

Microsoft Project
Figure 5-
Figure 5-

6. Intranet Gantt Chart Organized

by Project Management Process Groups
Figure 5-
Table 5-4: Executing Tasks for JWD
Consulting’s WBS
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 and roll them up
• Mind-mapping approach: Mind mapping is a technique that uses
branches radiating out from a core idea to structure thoughts and ideas
Figure 5-7. Sample Mind-Mapping Approach
for Creating a WBS
Figure 5-8. Gantt Charts With WBS
Generated From a Mind Map
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
Table 5-5. Sample WBS Dictionary Entry
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
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
What Went Wrong?
• A project scope that is too broad and grandiose can cause severe
problems
• Scope creep and an overemphasis on technology for technology’s sake resulted
in the bankruptcy of a large pharmaceutical firm, Texas-based FoxMeyer Drug
• 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
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
Global Issues
• Many countries have had difficulties controlling the scope of large
projects, especially those that involve advanced technologies and
many different users
• For example, the state government of Victoria, Australia, has a Web
site for its public transportation smart card at www.myki.com.au.
• There were many problems in developing and implementing the
smart card
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
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
• 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
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 like NWA did with ResNet
Using Software to Assist in Project Scope
Management
• Word-processing software helps create several scope-related
documents
• Spreadsheets help to perform financial calculations, weighed
scoring models, and develop charts and graphs
• Communication software like e-mail and the Web help clarify and
communicate scope information
• Project management software helps in creating a WBS, the basis for
tasks on a Gantt chart
• Specialized software is available to assist in project scope
management
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

References
• https://www.accord.edu.so/web/content/33460?download=true&a
ccess_token=bb2b556c-9cbc-4ca8-9542-452369e0540c
• Information Technology Project Management, Eighth Edition, Kathy
Schwalbe