Project Scope Management – (Part-III)

 Posted by Dhan at 1:35 pm  Project Management, Project Planning, Project Scope  No Responses »
Aug 092012
 

In the previous post of project scope management we looked at how project scope is defined. In this post, lets see importance of project scope verification and how to manage changes in project scope.

Project scope verification

Even though you may define project scope, it is critical to verify it. The objective of project scope is to ensure all components as specified in work-breakdown-structure (WBS), identified resources, delivery timeline, quality levels are aligning with the objective of the project and in turn aligning with the goals of the organization and project scope verification is a good mechanism to ensure that.

You can identify internal (team members/SME) as well as external stakeholder (project sponsor, customer) to perform scope verification. You can facilitate meetings to verify scope. You will realize that project scope definition, planning and verification are also interdependent processes. If you organization has a good mix of these processes ensure lesser scope creep.

Monitoring and controlling scope change

Even though your organization may have well defined policies and practices to define project scope, it does not stop from changing scope of a project. The change in scope is unavoidable in most of the circumstances. However scope change is different from scope creep. Scope creep is unauthorized, informal changes to the project scope. It simply means that project scope is being changed without making any provision for additional resources, budget or timeline.

So there is definite need to monitor scope change and control it. These processes can be facilitated by change control mechanism. If during the course of project execution, if stakeholder/sponsor wish to add new element in project scope e.g. new feature, new service request type; the request should be managed through a formal channel. This formal channel ensures all relevent project stakeholders are aware of the proposed change, which can be evaluated further to identify impact(s) and desired addition of resources, timeline, quality, or budget.

Of course, one can optimize the change control process by introducing levels of approvals, escalations, etc. You would agree, generally scope change impacts the cost/budget. Hence it is prudent to involve customers, project sponsors, and team members as appropriate to understand and agree on scope change.

Conclusion

Most of us are aware of the statistics that I shared in the beginning of this article. In the survey conducted, project failure rates reported are significantly high. One of the critical contributors for failure has been scope change. If managed effectively, the chances of making a project successful are much higher. So for best results

  1. Involve right stakeholders at right time (scope definition, planning, approval, etc.)
  2. Communicate clearly and regularly with stakeholders
  3. Ensure that sound change control process are in place

You may also find useful to read more about project scope control and management article at brighthubpm, the wikipedia article, defining project scope (pdf), project scope planning guide (pdf by CDC.gov).

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ZilicusPM – Online Project Management Software

ZilicusPM is online project management software that offers an incredibly simple and collaborative  way to manage project Try ZilicusPM a powerful tool that enable online project planning – WBS, online scheduling, resource assignment, Gantt chart, project tracking, issue management, online calendar, risk register and much more.

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Project Scope Management – (Part-II)

 Posted by Dhan at 3:10 pm  Project Management, Project Planning, Project Scope  2 Responses »
Aug 032012
 

In the previous post of “project scope management” we briefly introduced the concept of project scope, importance of well defined scope and how project scope gets shaped up during project initiation process. In this post, we are going to understand how project scope gets defined step-by-step.

Defining a project scope

Once you have a feasibility report and the project gets approval, the next step is to define the project scope. You need to identify the participants who will help you in defining project scope. You can invite your team members, subject matter experts, quality analysts, finance

What needs to be delivered (WBS)?

It is clear that if scope is changing frequently, it means someone is not able to identify/understand/communicate what needs to be delivered. And others are getting dragged because of it. Hence to make it clearer, one can define project scope in terms of work-breakdown-structure (WBS). As you break-down the deliverables in to components/modules/ deliverable work items, you get better idea about what to deliver, how easy/difficult would it be? How long will it take, etc?

Thus defining WBS is like putting project scope in a framework based on which finer details of other aspects can be determined, like

How many resources are required (Resources)?

Once you figure out what kind of skillset, experienced resources, equipment are required to complete individual work-item as specified in the WBS? You can further ensure whether your organization has all required resource or need to procure/recruit. If you need to recruit them/procure them, you need to plan accordingly.

e.g. If the project requires a team of five environmental engineers/consultants; you need to check whether your organization has these resources. If not, is this talent available in the market, at what cost and by when do you want them to start working and how long?

What is the SLA or quality being delivered (Quality)?

What level of service or product quality are we going to ensure through this project? If the business requires sales support 24×7, then what level of provisions do you need to make? If business requires lesser than 5 service/product issues per week, what are the quality control mechanisms you need to put in place?

How long will it take to complete the delivery (Duration)?

Considering deliverables expected, resources required, and quality desired, you need to estimate what will be timeline for delivering a given project. Here work breakdown structure (WBS) helps greatly. You can take a bottom up approach wherein you can estimate time/duration required for individual/smallest component in the wbs and sum it up in the level to arrive at estimated overall duration for a project

What are potential risks in the delivery (Risk)?

Looking at project scope, wbs, resources available, provision made for budget; you can highlight risks that can potentially occur during the project delivery timeline. You can provide initial assessment of probability of occurrence, severity of the impact if these risk occur, etcl and what could be the possible strategy to tackle it, risk mitigation plan, risk contingency plan, risk transfer plan, risk acceptance plan, etc.

What will be the cost of delivering the project (Cost)?

Based on all above inputs, you can estimate the cost required to deliver a given project. Considering the cost-benefit analysis, your project sponsor may object the budget numbers, he may suggest changes. Having detailed analysis of all above factor will help you in justifying the cost numbers.


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Project Management Software by Zilicus
ZilicusPM – Online Project Management Software

ZilicusPM is online project management software that offers an incredibly simple and collaborative  way to manage project Try ZilicusPM a powerful tool that enable online project planning – WBS, online scheduling, resource assignment, Gantt chart, project tracking, issue management, online calendar, risk register and much more.

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Back To Basics – Project Planning (Part-II)

 Posted by Dhan at 11:15 am  Project Management, Project Planning  6 Responses »
Mar 272012
 

In the first part, we looked at different elements of project planning & need of project planning. In this post we will look at project scope, project deliverables and three constraints that decides project scope & deliverables.

You can jump to Project Planning | Project Scope | Delivery Schedule Planning | Resource Planning | Cost Planning | Quality Planning | Risk Planning | Communication Planning parts of this series.

Elements of project plan

Elements of Project Planning (Time Resources & Quality) that defines scope.
Elements of Project Planning that define project scope

Figure 2: Elements of Project Planning

Project Scope Planning

Any project is expected to provide its stakeholders with certain outcome, which is commonly termed as project deliverables. These project deliverables depends on the scope of the project. Analogically, defining a project scope is like drawing a map. In the map, the boundaries are drawn to indicate stretch/ extent of a given territory; similarly project scope outlines the extent of project deliverables.

Essentially, project scope is the definition of what the project is expected to achieve and specify the budget of both time and cost that needs to be provisioned to create the project deliverables before the project gets closed. For the best result, one needs to take care of clearly carving out project definition & the budgetary requirements. More detailing & precision during project planning definitely help the team organize their work efficiently & deliver the project more effectively.  Without a project scope, project execution can go haywire.

Project Deliverables

To define project scope, one needs to refer project requirements. The project planner needs to list down project deliverable items unambiguously stating whether they are ‘In Scope’ or ‘Not in Scope’. So, project scope is about outlining the project deliverables. Based on project scope, project planner(s) create(s) work break down structure (WBS).

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

The WBS is a breakdown/ decomposition of project work into distinct work items at higher level. These work items are aligned with the project objective and can help the project team to create expected deliverables. Generally the project team can refer to this work item hierarchy to decide whether any given task is included in WBS or not.

Essentially, WBS is decomposition of project work in a hierarchical fashion wherein with each descending level, it gives details of project deliverable required from project team.

Triangular Constraints (TQR)

The project scope is generally constrained, with respect to following aspects

  1. Time
  2. Quality
  3. Resources

If you stretch any corner of the triangle in Figure 3: Elements of Project Planning: the triangle gets distorted; similarly any change in the scope of the project has direct effect on (either any or all) of time, quality and resources of given project. Vice versa, any change in time or cost or resource can make the project scope altered.

And each corner of this triangle in turn has cost implication e.g. any addition of resource to project can increase cost of project, any delay in delivery can increase cost of project, any compromise can quality can have further effect on cost of the project. Hence cost of the project is directly dependent on project scope & project scope in turn is dependent on project delivery time, quality parameters & resource requirement.

You can jump to Project Planning | Project Scope | Delivery Schedule Planning | Resource Planning | Cost Planning | Quality Planning | Risk Planning | Communication Planning parts of this series.

What do you think of this post? Let me know your feedback & comments.

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ZilicusPM – Online Project Management Software

Are you thinking of using project management software for project planning & scheduling – Try ZilicusPM a powerful tool that enable online project planning – WBS, online scheduling, resource assignment, Gantt chart, project tracking, issue tracking, online calendar, risk register and much more.

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