The Principles Behind Scope Management

Project Management – Scope Management

All that work which is essential to be completed in order for a project to be successful comes under the scope of the project. This can be in terms of coming up with a new product or completing a construction project. The scope of a project actually depends upon three different variables.

These include the cost, time and quality. It is in terms of these variables that the scope of any project is defined and managed as well. One of the steps at the beginning of any project is that of identification of the scope. Project scope and its management are at the heart of Project Management.

Identify Project Scope

Once the project scope has been identified, scope management comes next throughout the life of the project to make sure that the project gets completed within the estimated time frame and cost and is up to the mark in terms of the quality. These three factors are the main forces in any project. In most circumstances one of these forces is fixed in a project, while the remaining two have an inverse relationship with each other.

An example of this can be in the form of the quality being the constant force. In this case, the cost will be inversely related to the time. So, if the quality is fixed, then the less the time for the project, the more the cost will have to be for hiring extra workforce and other resources for completion in short time.

CPM Scheduling

Before starting with any kind of detailed CPM Scheduling and usage of Project Management Software for applying the techniques and tools for Project Management, determining the scope is the most important factor. For a project manager, it is one of the first and foremost responsibilities to prepare a formal statement for the scope of the project.

The scope statement gives the project team with an immense opportunity for decision-making. Scope Management involves the reviewing and monitoring of the scope statement while moving forwards with the project. Considering the importance of staying within the scope of the project, a scope baseline is created at the time of the start of the project. For this purpose, listing the requirements associated with the end product and the outputs is advisable.

Scope Statement

When the project manager prepares a scope statement for a project, it means that the functionality and outputs expected from the project are listed so that they are clearly defined. And then according to this scope and time limitations, the CPM Scheduling Software and CPM Software is used for the optimal scheduling of the project.

However, no matter how well defined or planned a project is at the beginning, there may be many factors along the way that will change and will ultimately have an impact on the time, cost and quality. In addition, the functionality of the project is also likely to get changed.

This phenomenon is mostly called scope creep. The extent of this phenomenon ranges from project to project and client to client. If the scope creep is there in your project, it can make it look poorly defined and it can turn out to be disastrous. In case this happens, you can take one of these three steps. These include adding time, adding quality and also cutting the quality of the final product or service.

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