Scope Management

Scope Management is an important knowledge area for PMP masters. It is all about making sure that the project includes only the work required to complete the project successfully. Here the success is Time + Quality + Content. To be effective in scope management, the manager must learn to control what is and what is not in the scope of the project. There are some best practices I learned from my discussions with many mangers in recent years.

1. Collect requirements in early stage itself and get a sign-off – It happens by clearly understanding the business of client, by understanding the needs of the stakeholders and the capabilities and constraints of our resources. I suggest interviews as best method of requirement collection. The manager must ask questions about stakeholder’s views of the finished product, the deliverables they expect to receive and mainly the schedule of the project.

2. Change Management Board – Change Control or Change Management board is a group of members including the key technical and management team of the project. The scope of the project should be well defined in a document and shared. Any amount of variation in the scope of the project can affect the project schedule, budget and ultimately the success of the project. The change request should first come into CCB for a discussion. The impact analysis results should be discussed. The approved Change should be published with its impact on other areas to all stakeholders. The change should be logged for any further clarifications. The roll-back scenarios should be planned.

There are more, lets discuss in coming days.