Scope management

Overview

Scope management identifies, defines and controls the project outputs, outcomes and benefits.

Managing the project scope is primarily concerned with defining and controlling what is and isn't included in a project.

A clearly defined and managed scope helps the project team maintain its focus on achieving project goals and objectives.

These activities promote scope clarity and understanding, and help to reduce the risk of "scope creep".

Key activities

Scope management includes the following key activities:

• Scope planning – The project scope statement and scope management plan is developed, describing the approach for scope management.
• Collect requirements – Determining and documenting stakeholder's needs to meet project objectives. It provides the basis for defining the product scope and project scope.
• Define the scope – Involves the formulation of a comprehensive definition of the product(s), service, or other results the project will produce. Since all the requirements identified may not be included in the project, the define scope process selects the final project requirements. The project's formal scope is comprised of the scope statement and the work breakdown structure (WBS).
• Validate the scope – Compares the deliverables to the original project scope. This is to determine if the deliverables cover the scope baseline captured in the project’s scope statement and the WBS.
• Control the scope – Monitoring the project and product scope status and managing changes to the scope baseline.

Key outputs

• Scope baseline:
  • scope statement
  • work breakdown structure
  • WBS dictionary
  • work packages.
• Scope management plan.
• Requirements management plan.