The important part of planning project activities is scope management, in order to be sure that planned resources and activities are enough to finish the project successfully. The important part of project scope management is scope planning. This is the phase when the project manager and stakeholder analyse the final product, plan necessary activities for its production, estimate its cost and time required for production. The outcome of the scope planning should be the scope document which contains the description of the project product, the market need of the project product, project benefits and features.
The project scope management consist of a few stages: initiation process, scope planning, scope definition, scope verification, and scope change control.
Initiation is related to the formal start of the new project or the existing project. The authorisation of the projects usually occur as the result of market demand, business need, customer request, technological advancement, and social need. Important factors here are product description and strategic plan. The tools and techniques for initiation are project selection methods and export judgement. The output should be the project charter.
Scope planning is the elaborating and documenting of the project’s work. Scope analysis techniques are product analysis, cost analysis, and possible alternatives identification. The output of this phase should be the scope statement, supporting details, and scope management plan. The scope statement consist of the summary of the project description, possible benefits, project deliverables and objectives. The scope management plan is the document that manages the project, and injecting the required changes into the project.
Scope definition usually divides the project main parts into smaller parts in order to improve the project details (like times, costs and so on). It is important to make a scope analysis for a project accurate for the project’s deployment. The inputs here are scope statement and project limitations. The tools for scope definition are WBS, which can be rearranged during the scope management process. The output of the scope management is the updated scope statement and updated WBS.
Scope verification is the formal process of the project approval among the stakeholders. This process includes reviewing all aspects of planned project deployment, WBS, scope statement, and project plan. It can be completed by reviewing the processes and can be finalised with formal approval.
Scope change control is about influencing the factors that provoke the scope of change, managing the scope changes and creating a final updated project scope document. In order to do so, the WBS and change requests should be used. The project manager should use the WBS and project performance results. The output should be the changed project scope document.
