Project Scope Management

It 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 ensures efficiency and Productivity.
The term scope can refer to:
 Product scope. The features and functions that characterize a product, service, or result;
 Project scope. The work performed to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features
and functions.
Completion of the project scope is measured against the project management plan
Completion of the product scope is measured against the product requirements
There are 6 Processes
Process Process Group
Plan Scope Management Planning
Collect Requirements Planning
Define Scope Planning
Create WBS Planning
Validate Scope Monitoring and Control
Control Scope Monitoring and Control

1. Plan Scope Management

It is the process of creating a scope management plan that documents how the project scope will be
defined, validated, and controlled.
The key benefit of this process is that it provides guidance and direction on how scope will be
managed throughout the project.
This plan helps reduce the risk of project scope creep.
The goal is to plan who all, when and what tools and techniques will be used to create, manage and
validate scope.

Inputs
.1 Project Management Plan
.2 Project Charter
.3 Enterprise Environmental Factors
.4 Organizational Process Assets

Tools and Techniques

.1 Expert Judgement
.2 Meetings

Outputs
.1 Scope Management Plan: It is a component of the project management plan that describes how the
scope will be defined, developed, monitored, controlled, and verified
It defines a process to
 Prepare a detailed project scope statement;
 Creation of the WBS from the detailed project scope statement;
 To maintain and approve WBS
 Specifies how formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables will be obtained;
 Manages Changes in the Scope Baseline.
.2 Requirement Management Plan: It is a component of the project management plan that describes
how requirements will be analyzed, documented, and managed.
 The components of Requirement Management Plan include:
 How requirements activities will be planned, tracked, and reported;
 Configuration management activities such as: how changes to the product will be initiated, how
impacts will be analyzed, how they will be traced, tracked, and reported, as well as the authorization
levels required to approve these changes;
 Requirements prioritization process;
 What Product metrics will be used to trace Product Requirements and the basis for using them
 The elements that will be a part of Requirements Traceability Matrix.

2. Collect Requirements
It is the process of determining, documenting, and managing stakeholder needs and requirements to
meet project objectives.
The key benefit of this process is that it provides the basis for defining and managing the project scope
including product scope.
Types of Requirements
 Business requirements: Describe the higher-level needs of the organization as a whole, such as the
business issues or opportunities, and reasons why a project has been undertaken.
 Stakeholder requirements: Describe needs of a stakeholder or stakeholder group.
 Solution requirements: Describes features, functions, and characteristics of the product, service, or
result that will meet the business and stakeholder requirements.
○ Functional requirements describe the behaviors of the product. Examples include processes, data,
and interactions with the product.
○ Nonfunctional requirements supplement functional requirements and describe the environmental
conditions or qualities required for the product to be effective. Examples include: reliability, security,
performance, safety, level of service, supportability, retention/purge, etc. Transition
requirements: Describe temporary capabilities, such as data conversion and training requirements,
needed to transition from the current “as-is” state to the future “to-be” state.
 Project requirements: Describe the actions, processes, or other conditions the project needs to meet
 Quality requirements, which capture any condition or criteria needed to validate the successful
completion of a project deliverable or fulfillment of other project requirements.
Inputs
.1 Scope Management Plan
.2 Requirement Management Plan
.3 Stakeholder Management Plan
.4 Stakeholder Register
.5 Project Charter

Tools and Techniques

.1 Interviews: An interview is a formal or informal approach to extract information from stakeholders by
talking to them directly.
It is typically performed by asking prepared and spontaneous questions and recording the responses.
.2 Focus Group: A group of people are asked about their perception, opinion, belief and attitude towards
the Proposed Product, service or result. These are interactive sessions wherein all the participants
interact with one other freely
Keyword: Same field of Expertise
.3 Facilitated Workshops: These workshops brings cross-functional stakeholders on the common platform
and are led by facilitator.
Example: JAD (Joint Application Design/Development Group), QFD (Quality Function Deployment)
Keyword: Cross Functional
.4 Group Creativity Techniques:
 Brainstorming. A technique used to generate and collect multiple ideas related to project and product
requirements.
 Nominal group technique. A technique that enhances brainstorming with a voting process used to rank
the most useful ideas for further brainstorming or for prioritization.
Keyword: Voting, Prioritization
 Idea/mind mapping. A technique in which ideas created through individual brainstorming sessions are
presented pictorially in the form of the map which helps in generating new ideas by finding out the
common points and eliminating the differences.
Keyword: Pictorial Representation
 Affinity diagram. A technique that allows large numbers of ideas to be classified into groups for review
and analysis.
 Delphi Technique: A technique in which a selected group of experts answers questionnaires and
provides feedback regarding the responses from each round of requirements gathering. The responses
are only available to the facilitator to maintain anonymity.
Keyword: Anonymity
 Multi-criteria decision analysis: This Techniques utilizes a decision matrix in order to arrive at an
important decision. It may uses weightage for evaluating various ideas
Keyword: Weighted Score
Keyword: BDMAN
.5 Group Decision Making Techniques:
 Unanimity. A decision that is reached whereby everyone agrees on a single course of action.
 Majority. A decision that is reached with support obtained from more than 50 % of the members of
the group.
 Plurality. A decision that is reached whereby the largest block in a group decides.
 Dictatorship. In this method, one individual makes the decision for the group.
.6 Questionnaires and Surveys: Questionnaires and surveys are written sets of questions designed to
quickly accumulate information from a large number of respondents.
It is used when a quick turnaround is needed, when respondents are geographically dispersed, and
where statistical analysis is appropriate.
.7 Observations: It is used for people who are not comfortable articulating the requirements. An
observer is appointed who observes the people performing their job and collects the requirements.
Example : Job Shadowing
.8 Prototypes: Example: Story Boarding
.9 Benchmarking: Benchmarking involves comparing actual or planned practices, such as processes and
operations, to those of comparable organizations to identify best practices, generate ideas for
improvement, and provide a basis for measuring performance.
.10 Context diagrams
.11 Document analysis
 Outputs
.1 Requirements Documentation: It describes how individual requirements meet the business need for
the project.
 Requirements should be unambiguous (measurable and testable), traceable, complete, consistent,
and acceptable to key stakeholders
.2 Requirements Traceability Matrix: It is a grid that links product requirements from their origin to the
deliverables that satisfy them
 The implementation of a requirements traceability matrix helps ensure that each requirement adds
business value by linking it to the business and project objectives
 It provides a structure for managing changes to the product scope.

3. Define Scope
It is the process of developing a detailed description of the project and product.
 The key benefit of this process is that it describes the project, service, or result boundaries by defining
which of the requirements collected will be included in and excluded from the project scope.
 It selects the final project requirements from the requirements documentation delivered during the
Collect Requirements process
Inputs
.1 Scope Management Plan
.2 Project Charter
.3 Requirement Documentation
.4 Organizational Process Assets

Tools and Techniques

.1 Expert Judgement
.2 Product Analysis
.3 Alternative Generation
.4 Facilitated Workshops

Outputs
.1 Project Scope Statement: The project scope statement is the description of the project scope, major
deliverables, assumptions, and constraints.
 The project scope statement documents the entire scope, including project and product scope.
 It describes, in detail, the project’s deliverables and the work required to create those deliverables.
 The detailed Project Scope Statement Includes
 Product scope description. Progressively elaborates the characteristics of the product, service, or result
described in the project charter and requirements documentation.
 Acceptance criteria. A set of conditions that is required to be met before deliverables are accepted.
Deliverable. Any unique and verifiable product, result, or capability that is required to be produced
Project exclusion. Generally identifies what is excluded from the project. States what is out of scope for
the project helps to manage stakeholders’ expectations.
 Constraints. A limiting factor that affects the execution of a project. Constraints identified with the
project scope statement list and describe the specific internal or external restrictions or limitations
associated with the project scope that affect the execution of the project.
 Assumptions. A factor in the planning process that is considered to be true, real, or certain, without
proof or demonstration.
.2 Project Documents Updates
 4. Create WBS
Create WBS is the process of subdividing project deliverables and project work into smaller, more
manageable components.
 The key benefit of this process is that it provides a structured vision of what has to be delivered.

Inputs
.1 Scope Management Plan
.2 Project Scope Statement
.3 Requirements Documentation
.4 Enterprise Environmental Factors
.5 Organizational Process Assets

Tools and Techniques

.1 Decomposition: It is a technique used for dividing and subdividing the project scope and project
deliverables into smaller, more manageable parts.
 The total of the work at the lowest levels are rolled up to the higher levels in order to ensure that no
work is left out or no extra work is performed.
 Also, called 100% rule.
 It generally involves the following activities:
 Identifying and analyzing the deliverables and related work;
 Structuring and organizing the WBS;
 Decomposing the upper WBS levels into lower-level detailed components;
 Developing and assigning identification codes to the WBS components;
 Verifying that the degree of decomposition of the deliverables is appropriate.
 It is of two types
 Top-Down Approach
 Bottoms-Up Approach
.2 Expert Judgement

Outputs
.1 Scope Baseline: Scope baseline for the project is the approved version of the project scope statement,
work breakdown structure (WBS), and its associated WBS dictionary.
 A baseline can be changed only through formal change control procedures and is used as a basis for
comparison while performing Validate Scope and Control Scope processes.
 Components of Scope Baseline Include
 Project scope statement. The project scope statement includes the description of the project scope,
major deliverables, assumptions, and constraints
 Work Breakdown Structure: The WBS is a hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work to be
carried out by the project team.
 The WBS organizes and defines the total scope of the project, and represents the work specified in the
current approved project scope statement.
 The planned work is contained within the lowest level of WBS components, which are called work
packages.
 Work outside the WBS is outside the scope of the project.
 A work package can be used to group the activities where work is scheduled and estimated,
monitored, and controlled.
 The work package is the work defined at the lowest level of the WBS for which cost and duration can
be estimated and managed.
 Control Account: A control account is a management control point where scope, budget, actual cost,
and schedule are integrated and compared to the earned value for performance measurement.
 Each control account may include one or more work packages, but each of the work packages should
be associated with only one control account.
 A control account may include one or more planning packages.
 Planning package is a work breakdown structure component below the control account with known
work content but without detailed schedule activities.
 Code of Accounts: Numbering system used to uniquely identify component of the WBS.
 WBS dictionary. The WBS dictionary is a document that provides detailed deliverable, activity, and
scheduling information about each component in the WBS.
 The WBS dictionary is a document that supports the WBS.
 Information in the WBS dictionary may include
 Code of account identifier
 Description of work,
 Assumptions and constraints
 Responsible organization
 Schedule milestones
 Associated schedule activities
 Resources required
 Cost estimates
 Quality requirements
 Acceptance criteria
 Technical references
 Agreement information.
.2 Project Documents Updates

5. Validate Scope
Validate Scope is the process of formalizing acceptance of the completed project deliverables.
 The key benefit of this process is that it brings objectivity to the acceptance process and increases the
chance of final product, service, or result acceptance by validating each deliverable.
 It is concerned with acceptance of the deliverables.
 It is a unique process executed by the customers to check and accept the deliverables.
Inputs
.1 Project Management Plan
.2 Requirements Documentation
.3 Requirements Traceability Matrix
.4 Verified Deliverables: Verified deliverables are project deliverables that are completed and checked for
correctness through the Control Quality process
.5 Work Performance Data

Tools and Techniques

.1 Inspection: Inspection includes activities such as measuring, examining, and validating to determine
whether work and deliverables meet requirements and product acceptance criteria
.2 Group Decision Making Techniques
 Outputs
.1 Accepted Deliverables: Deliverables that meet the acceptance criteria are formally signed off and
approved by the customer or sponsor.
 Formal documentation received from the customer or sponsor acknowledging formal stakeholder
acceptance of the project’s deliverables is forwarded to the Close Project or Phase process
.2 Change Requests
.3 Work Performance Information
.4 Project Documents Updates

6. Control Scope
It is the process of monitoring the status of the project and product scope and managing changes to the
scope baseline.
 The key benefit of this process is that it allows the scope baseline to be maintained throughout the
project.
 Controlling the project scope ensures all requested changes and recommended corrective or
preventive actions are processed through the Perform Integrated Change Control process.
 Control Scope is also used to manage the actual changes when they occur.
 The goal is to find out differences between planned Scope vs Actual Scope and take corrective actions.
Inputs
.1 Project Management Plan
.2 Requirements Documentation
.3 Requirement Traceability Matrix
.4 Work Performance Data
.5 Organizational Process Assets

Tools and Techniques

.1 Variance Analysis: Variance analysis is a technique for determining the cause and degree of difference
between the baseline and actual performance.

Outputs
.1 Work Performance Information
.2 Change Requests
.3 Project Management Plan Updates
.4 Project Documents Updates
.5 Organizational Process Assets

Important Terms
Gold Plating: Gold plating means intentionally adding extra features or functions to the products which
were not included in the scope statement.
Usually gold plating is performed by either the project team or the project manager with no additional
cost to the client.
Gold Plating is considered as an unauthorized change in the scope
Gold plating increases the input cost (though, in many cases it does not appear to be high), increases
the risk, and the expectation of the customer is elevated
Scope Creep: The uncontrolled expansion to product or project scope without adjustments to time, cost,
and resources is referred to as Scope Creep.
Scope creep is also known as requirement creep, which refers to the uncontrolled changes in the
project’s or product’s scope.
Scope creep happens in the project for following reasons:
 Interference from the client.
 An incomplete scope statement.
 A poor change control system.
 Miss-communication among the team members.
 Reasons external to organizations; e.g. market conditions, regulatory requirements, or technological
advancements.
Scope creep occurs when the scope of product is changed and the project budget and schedule remain
unchanged.
Consequences of scope creep may include a delayed schedule and cost overrun.