9. Scope Planning
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Adrienne Watt
You always want to know exactly what work has to be done before you start it. You have a collection of team members, and you need to know exactly what they’re going to do to meet the project’s objectives. The scope planning process is the very first thing you do to manage your scope. Project scope planning is concerned with the definition of all the work needed to successfully meet the project objectives. The whole idea here is that when you start the project, you need to have a clear picture of all the work that needs to happen on your project, and as the project progresses, you need to keep that scope up to date and written down in the project’s scope management plan.
Defining the Scope
You already have a head start on refining the project’s objectives in quantifiable terms, but now you need to plan further and write down all the intermediate and final deliverables that you and your team will produce over the course of the project. Deliverables include everything that you and your team produce for the project (i.e., anything that your project will deliver). The deliverables for your project include all of the products or services that you and your team are performing for the client, customer, or sponsor. They include every intermediate document, plan, schedule, budget, blueprint, and anything else that will be made along the way, including all of the project management documents you put together. Project deliverables are tangible outcomes, measurable results, or specific items that must be produced to consider either the project or the project phase completed. Intermediate deliverables, like the objectives, must be specific and verifiable.
All deliverables must be described in a sufficient level of detail so that they can be differentiated from related deliverables. For example:
A twin engine plane versus a single engine plane
A red marker versus a green marker
A daily report versus a weekly report
A departmental solution versus an enterprise solution
One of the project manager’s primary functions is to accurately document the deliverables of the project and then manage the project so that they are produced according to the agreed-on criteria. Deliverables are the output of each development phase, described in a quantifiable way.
Project Requirements
After all the deliverables are identified, the project manager needs to document all the requirements of the project. Requirements describe the characteristics of the final deliverable, whether it is a product or a service. They describe the required functionality that the final deliverable must have or specific conditions the final deliverable must meet in order to satisfy the objectives of the project. A requirement is an objective that must be met. The project’s requirements, defined in the scope plan, describe what a project is supposed to accomplish and how the project is supposed to be created and implemented. Requirements answer the following questions regarding the as-is and to-be states of the business: who, what, where, when, how much, and how does a business process work?
Requirements may include attributes like dimensions, ease of use, color, specific ingredients, and so on. If we go back to the example of the company producing holiday eggnog, one of the major deliverables is the cartons that hold the eggnog. The requirements for that deliverable may include carton design, photographs that will appear on the carton, color choices, etc.
Requirements specify what the final project deliverable should look like and what it should do. Requirements must be measurable, testable, related to identified business needs or opportunities, and defined to a level of detail sufficient for system design. They can be divided into six basic categories: functional, non-functional, technical, business, user, and regulatory requirements.
Functional Requirements
Functional requirements describe the characteristics of the final deliverable in ordinary non-technical language. They should be understandable to the customers, and the customers should play a direct role in their development. Functional requirements are what you want the deliverable to do.
Vehicle Example
If you were buying vehicles for a business, your functional requirement might be: “The vehicles should be able to take up to a one ton load from a warehouse to a shop.”
Computer System Example
For a computer system you may define what the system is to do: “The system should store all details of a customer’s order.”
The important point to note is that what is wanted is specified and not how it will be delivered.
Non-Functional Requirements
Non-functional requirements specify criteria that can be used to judge the final product or service that your project delivers. They are restrictions or constraints to be placed on the deliverable and how to build it. Their purpose is to restrict the number of solutions that will meet a set of requi