Today, projects of all kinds require immense planning efforts and one of the most important aspects of those projects is Scope Management. Managing a projects scope is no small task as scope includes all the work put into a project and how it is used effectively to meet deadlines and produce deliverables.
There are three major steps in scope management, and they are Planning, Controlling, and Closing.
Planning is the first step in scope management. Planning involves gathering all relevant information about the project from stakeholders and clients. In this step you will create a scope management plan which will outline how you handle shortcoming in the project, how deliverables are produced, and how the WBS will be managed. This step is crucial in starting a project off right and ensuring a smooth flow throughout.
Controlling is the next step in scope management. Controlling scope includes continually reviewing project progress and where work is being put and seeing if changes are needed to the original scope management plan. This step also involves preventing scope creep. Scope creep is uncontrolled growth in scope of a project; Allowing scope to grow unbounded will surely be the end of any substantial project as there will end up being no clear exit conditions for the project and it will seemingly last forever. Scope creep tends to happen when there are no regular reviews of project progress and reassessment of the original scope management plan.
And last but not least is Closing, the final step in scope management. Once a project has reached the end of its lifecycle the Closing phase of scope management begins. In this stage all deliverables are produced and handed off, project documentation is finalized and
stored. One final review of the scope management plan is needed to make sure the final project satisfies it in its entirety. And if it does then the project can be officially declared finished.
Project scope management is crucial to a project’s success, as you can see it takes part in the project from its inception up until the project is declared finished. Without it projects
would grow and grow to create insurmountable amounts of work and they would never be finished. Understanding the three major steps in project scope management is only just the start, these steps also need to be put into action.
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