Every project manager’s dream is to complete their projects smoothly from start to finish, on time, and within budget. Unfortunately, it will remain a dream unless they can successfully project scope management.
It is self-evident when starting a project with an indefinite scope, i.e. not having enough idea of the effort and work needed to complete the project and how much labour it requires as well as how much the general budget specified for it is, it will of course not take much time to declare its failure.
Good project scope management is closely related to proper documentation of all components and monitoring project progress or regression expectations. Therefore, it is necessary to establish pre-planning for projects to achieve satisfactory results and avoid potential risks.
From this point of view and our belief in the importance of project scope management, we have prepared a quick and comprehensive guide that guarantees the success of your projects and tells you how to effectively define project scope management if you follow its traces step by step.
What does project scope management mean?
Theoretically, we can shorten the definition of project scope management as the process that ensures that the company’s projects contain all the work, processes and functions related to its full completion while ensuring that there is no redundant work or no positive importance to the project.
As for the practical side, it means preparing a list that includes all that the project plan should contain, essential or sub-tasks, and the timetable that determines the completion time of each task to implement the project on time.
Here, we do not forget the importance of the budget required to complete the project, in addition to indicating the resources required at each stage and checking the quality of each one.
In general, project scope management is a structure that is primarily concerned with monitoring project management methodologies and identifies what is to be included or not included in the implementation plan. The goal is to produce finished projects with high accuracy and lasting quality.
How to plan for successful project scope management?
Breaking down an emerging project scope management strategy into simple steps that develop one after the other smoothly is essential. Doing this will help you see how good planning can benefit you and your project members and save you from redundant and unimportant processes.
- Planning Scope Management
This step is simple compared to the rest of the steps. As the project manager, you are responsible for meeting with stakeholders, employers, and line managers to develop an initial plan for the project scope management and achieve a coherent understanding of it.
This plan must also include the validation of this scope and how it is managed and controlled significantly, as this will contribute to the outline of the project’s success.
- Collecting Requirements
Now that you understand the specific project scope management area, you must secure the various requirements to achieve the project objectives. But of course, it is not that simple, as it is not enough to ask your customer about the specifications of the product or service he wants.
Especially since collecting and securing project supplies is a discovery process in itself, stakeholders may not be able to know about it, nor even what quality is required of them. So you can determine it by surveying the opinions of your target consumers and finding out which of the features they prefer and whether the project is related to a service or a product.
- Project Scope Statement
Of course, you made great strides from this step in the phase in which you planned the project. But you must specify this in writing so that the general form of the project is visible, and this written picture is an official reference for you and the work team throughout the project.
Within this step, it is also necessary to mention redundant or unnecessary operations to exclude them to save time and effort.
- Creating a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
The overall task breakdown structure is preparing the main document assigning each person’s job. This document will identify the responsibilities of each of the project members and the specific time for preparing each of them.
In this step, some free and paid platforms may help you organise and divide the tasks among all the members participating in the completion of the project. Not to mention that through it, you will be able to follow the implementation procedures and document the work of each member.
- Validate your project scope
This step is the most crucial in project scope management. Before starting implementation, you must hand over the project scope that you have prepared to the relevant stakeholders and executives to ensure you have approval *The green light* to complete the remaining steps of implementation.
Also, you are not solely responsible for errors not caused by your laziness but were not within the framework of the studied system. Likewise, this project may be a failure that was not taken into account so as not to expose yourself to fines or any other potential risks.
- Controlling Project Scope
Although you have reached the post-completion stage, your task as a project manager is far from over. As a manager, you must follow up on the post-implementation stages, which are to prepare weekly or monthly reports that track the progress of the project work as required to ensure the achievement of the desired goals of developing and managing the project scope management.
In light of this, we note that you must be fully prepared for any changes that may be requested from you or a team member to make the project as successful as possible and to increase your reputation as a successful and cooperative project manager.
Finally,
Project scope management is an indispensable element in any field, primarily concerned with defining the teams’ work in a simplified and easy-to-control manner. Practical project scope management ensures that any project starts in the proper “optimistic” manner, is delivered on time, and shows depreciable costs.
So, since project scope management is a project manager’s job only, it is imperative to develop your skills and experience in building effective strategies to manage the scope of your projects better. Therefore, we recommend that you attend Project Management Courses in London.
Through these courses, you will learn practical ways to project scope management through real examples and real-world scenarios.
