Chapter 5

Project Scope Management

Text book: Information Technology Project Management 8th edition

Dr. Deema ALShoaibi
Outlines
• What is project scope management?
• Planning scope management
• Collecting requirements
• Defining scope
• Creating the work breakdown structure
• Validating scope
• Controlling scope.
1. What is Project Scope Management
• Project success associated with factors such as: user involvement, clear business
objectives, and optimized scope.
• Those factors are elements of project scope management.
• Defining the scope is an important and difficult aspect.
• Scope: refers to all the work involved in creating the products of the project and
the processes used to create them.
• Scope includes  deliverables (product created as a part of a project)
 stakeholders must agree on the deliverables.
1. What is Project Scope Management
• Project scope management includes the processes involved in defining and
controlling what work is or is not included in a 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.
• Project scope management includes 6 main processes.
1. What is Project Scope Management
• Project scope management includes the processes involved in defining and
controlling what work is or is not included in a project.
• Six main processes are involved in project scope management:
1. Planning scope management involves determining how the project’s scope and requirements
will be managed. The project team works with appropriate stakeholders to create a scope
management plan and requirements management plan.
2. Collecting requirements involves defining and documenting the features and functions of the
products as well as the processes used for creating them. The project team creates
requirements documentation and a requirements traceability matrix as outputs of the
requirements collection process.
3. Defining scope involves reviewing the scope management plan, project charter, requirements
documents, and organizational process assets to create a scope statement, adding more
information as requirements are developed and change requests are approved. Outputs of
scope definition are the project scope statement and updates to project documents.
1. What is Project Scope Management
• Six main processes are involved in project scope management:
4. Creating the WBS involves subdividing the major project deliverables into smaller, more
manageable components. Outputs include a scope baseline (which includes a WBS and a
WBS dictionary) and updates to project documents.
5. Validating scope involves formalizing acceptance of the project deliverables. Key project
stakeholders, such as the customer and sponsor for the project, inspect and then formally
accept the deliverables during this process. If the deliverables are not acceptable, the customer
or sponsor usually requests changes. The outputs of this process are accepted deliverables,
change requests, work performance information, and updates to project documents.
6. Controlling scope involves controlling changes to project scope throughout the life of the
project—a challenge on many IT projects. Scope changes often influence the team’s ability to
meet project time and cost goals, so project managers must carefully weigh the costs and
benefits of scope changes. The outputs of this process are work performance information,
change requests, and updates to the project management plan, project documents, and
organizational process assets.
1. What is Project
Scope Management
• Six main processes are involved in
project scope management
• The figure summarizes these processes
and outputs and shows when they occur
in a typical project.
2. Planning Scope Management
• The first step in project scope management is planning how the
scope will be managed throughout the life of the project.
• The scope management plan is a subsidiary part of the project
management plan.
• Scope management plan can be informal and broad or formal and
detailed, based on the needs of the project.
• Small projects may not need a written scope management plan, but large
projects or highly technical projects often benefit from one.
2. Planning Scope Management
• Scope management plan includes the following information:
• How to prepare a detailed project scope statement
For example, are there templates or guidelines to follow? How much detail is
needed to describe each deliverable?
• How to create a WBS
It is often difficult to create a good WBS. This section of the scope
management plan would provide suggestions, samples, and resources for
creating a WBS.
• How to maintain and approve the WBS
The initial WBS often changes, and project team members disagree on what
should be included. The scope management plan describes guidelines for
maintaining the WBS and getting approval for it.
2. Planning Scope Management
• Scope management plan includes the following information:
• How to obtain formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables.
It is extremely important to understand the process for obtaining formal
acceptance of completed deliverables, especially for projects in which
payments are based on formal acceptance.
• How to control requests for changes to the project scope.
Organizations often have guidelines for submitting, evaluating, and approving
changes to scope, and this section of the scope management plan would
specify how to handle change requests for the project.
2. Planning Scope
Management
Discussion:
Incorporating changes into a project
increases both the project's
expenses and the time needed to
complete it. In your opinion, during
which phase of development do
you believe these alterations incur
the highest costs?
3. Collecting Requirements

• The second step in project scope

management is often the most difficult:
collecting requirements.
• A major consequence of not defining
requirements well is rework, which can
consume up to half of project costs,
especially for software development
projects.
• it costs much more (up to 30 times more) to
correct a software defect in later
development phases than to fix it in the
requirements phase.
3. Collecting Requirements
• Ways to collect requirements:
• Interviewing stakeholders  One on one is often very effective, although it can be
expensive and time-consuming.
• Questionnaires and surveys  faster, stakeholders should provide honest and thorough
information.
• Observation  good for projects that involve improving work processes and
procedures.
• Prototyping and document analysis  common techniques for collecting software
development requirements.
• Benchmarking  generating ideas by comparing specific project practices or product
characteristics to those of other projects or products inside or outside the performing
organization
3. Collecting Requirements
• Factors affecting effort spent in collecting requirements:
• Size.
• Complexity.
• Importance.
• It is important for a project team to decide how it will collect and manage requirements.
• It is crucial to gather inputs from key stakeholders and align the scope with business
strategy.
• Requirements should be documents.
• Documentations varies based on the project size and type. It could be a 1 page document
or a includes videos and pictures along with a room full of notebooks.
• Requirements are often broken down into different categories such as functional
requirements, service requirements, performance requirements, quality requirements, and
training requirements.
3. Collecting Requirements
• Requirements traceability matrix (RTM) is a table that lists requirements, their various
at- tributes, and the status of the requirements to ensure that all are addressed.
4. Defining Scope
• The next step in project scope management is to provide a detailed definition of the work required
for the project.
• Good scope definition is very important to project success
• Scope definition helps to improve the accuracy of time, cost, and resource estimates.
• Scope definition defines a baseline for performance measurement and project control, and aids in
communicating clear work responsibilities.
• Tools and techniques used in defining scope:
• Expert judgment.
• Product analysis.
• Input used to define scope:
• Project charter.
• Scope management plan.
• Requirements documentation.
• Project files.
• Lessons learned from previous, similar projects.
4. Defining Scope
• The next step in project scope management is to provide a detailed definition of the work required
for the project.
• Good scope definition is very important to project success
• Scope definition helps to improve the accuracy of time, cost, and resource estimates.
• Scope definition defines a baseline for performance measurement and project control, and aids in
communicating clear work responsibilities.
• Tools and techniques used in defining scope:
• Expert judgment.
• Product analysis.
• Input used to define scope:
• Project charter.
• Scope management plan.
• Requirements documentation.
• Project files.
• Lessons learned from previous, similar projects.
4. Defining Scope
• Project charter used to define the scope.
5. Creating The Work Breakdown Structure
• After collecting requirements and defining scope, the next step in project scope management is to create a
work breakdown structure.
• work breakdown structure (WBS) is a deliverable-oriented grouping of the work involved in a project
that defines its total scope.
• It is important to organize and divide the work into logical parts based on how the work will be performed
because most projects involve many people and many different deliverables.
• The WBS is a foundation document in project management because it provides the basis for planning and
managing project schedules, costs, resources, and changes.
• Decomposition is subdividing project deliverables into smaller pieces. The outputs of the process of
creating the WBS are the scope baseline and project documents updates.
• Scope baseline includes the approved project scope statement and its associated WBS and WBS
dictionary.
5. Creating The Work Breakdown Structure
• WBS is often depicted as a task-
oriented tree of activities, similar to an
organizational chart.
• A project team often organizes the
WBS around project products, project
phases, or the project management
process groups.
5. Creating The Work
Breakdown Structure
• WBS can be organized around project phases.
• WBS can be in both chart and tabular form.
• Notice that both of these formats show the same
information.
5. Creating The Work
Breakdown Structure
• WBS is the basis for project schedules.
5. Creating The Work
Breakdown Structure
• Gantt chart organized based
on the project management
processes.
5. Creating The Work Breakdown Structure
• Approaches to developing WBS:
• The analogy approach  using a similar project’s WBS as a starting point.
• Top-down approach  start with the largest items of the project and break them into
subordinate items. This process involves refining the work into greater and greater levels
of detail.
• Bottom-up approach  team members first identify as many specific tasks related to the
project as possible. They then aggregate the specific tasks and organize them into
summary activities, or higher levels in the WBS.
• Mind mapping  mind mapping is a technique that uses branches radiating from a core
idea to structure thoughts and ideas.
Instead of writing down tasks in a list or immediately trying to create a structure for tasks,
mind mapping allows people to write and even draw pictures of ideas in a nonlinear
format.
5. Creating The Work Breakdown Structure
• WBS Dictionary:
• A WBS dictionary is
a document that
provides detailed
information about
each WBS item.
6. Validating Scope
• Scope validation involves formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables.
• This acceptance is often achieved by a customer inspection and then sign-off on key
deliverables.
• To receive formal acceptance of the project scope, the project team must develop clear
documentation of the project’s products and procedures to evaluate whether they were
completed correctly and satisfactorily.
7. Controlling Scope
• The goal of scope control is to influence the factors that cause scope changes, to ensure that changes
are processed according to procedures developed as part of integrated change control, and to manage
changes when they occur.
• Lack of user input leads to problems with managing scope creep and controlling change.
• Suggestions for project team to improve user input:
• Develop a good project selection process for IT projects.
• Have users on the project team.
• Have regular meetings with defined agendas.
• Deliver something to project users and sponsors on a regular basis.
• Do not promise to deliver what the team cannot deliver in a particular time frame.
• Locate users with the developers.
End of chapter notes
• This chapter helps students to understand the importance of scope management.
• Planning and collecting requirements are an important steps to define scope.
• WBS is a deliverable oriented method to define the total scope.

• During the tutorial class, we will work on creating the WBS for a small project.
Questions?