What is Project Scope Management and What Are Its Underlying Processes?

            Project scope management encompasses the processes leveraged to define, document, and control the work efforts and outputs of the project and set clear boundaries to document and facilitate an understanding of what is included and what is not in the project. There are five processes involved in project scope management, as described below (Schwalbe, 2012)..

1. 1. Requirements Collection – A requirement is a set of conditions, expectations, attributes or features relative to the product of the project, or a desired service outcome, an end objective or some project deliverable. It ensures that the final project outcome meets the desired or acceptable criteria (e.g., performance expectation, functional features etc.). The requirements collection methods include; interviewing users, conducting facilitated workgroups, observation gathering, feedback solicitation (from focused groups), prototype development and analysis, and leveraging questionnaires, surveys or software tools for elicitation purpose.
   2. Scope Definition – This entails review of input documents such as the project charter, requirements documents (e.g., requirements traceability matrix), and other organization process assets (e.g., policies, procedures, project files, lessons learned from previous similar projects) to define and document a scope statement that clearly articulates the agreed boundaries and extent of work to be performed and highlights excluded work items.
   3. WBS Creation – This entails doing a logical grouping of activities or work packages relative to any in-scope deliverable or work item. A systematic hierarchical collection of such work packages constitutes the body of project work and is collectively referred to as WBS.
   4. Scope Verification – The process encompasses validation or verification of the previously defined and agreed scope of work, either during or towards the end of project, with intent to secure formal acceptance and/or sign-off from project stakeholders, project sponsor or customers.
   5. Scope Control – This process defines the rules and exercise the governance involved with respect to controlling changes to previously base-lined scope of work throughout the project life-cycle.

References

Schwalbe, K. (2012). Introduction to Project Management, Fourth Edition. Kathy Schwalbe LLC