Imagine yourself building a tower, what comes to your mind are what type of structure, the foundation on which the structure will be built, the cost of the project, the nature of the materials to be used and the personnel to undertake the project.
No doubt, the process of doing all these is scope planning. Scope planning is an important aspect of project management; it is what sets the project on the path of success.
In reality, some project managers often experience their projects going off-track thereby messing up everything. In such a case, what is lacking is a proper scope planning.
However, the task of managing scope, schedule, and budget of a project can be daunting for project managers but with scope planning the task is made easier as it enables you to be in the know of what you need to execute your project successfully.
According to the Harvard Business Review, one out of every six projects results in a budget overrun due to a lack of proper scope planning. Scope planning is what you need to have an in-depth understanding of your project and have a mastery over the project costs. It also aids you in overcoming the challenges that could happen in your project.
In this article, we will discuss scope planning, the roles it plays in the success of your project, and why it is very important to you as a project manager.
Índice
Scope planning: the values it brings to you
- Every project has its scope which involves the specific goals and objectives that you are out to achieve in it. Hence by embracing scope planning in your project management strides aids you to know the goals, what the deliverables and boundaries are, the required tasks needed to accomplish these deliverables, the costs involved, and the deadlines you and your team need to keep up with.
- Furthermore, scope planning allows you to be on top of your game in project management because you are always in the know of who is responsible for every task of the project and process that will be leveraged in getting the activities of the project done.
- It helps in establishing the right convictions among the relevant stakeholders that could spur them to agree on the project work to be carried out.
- Also, you must document your scope planning because you can refer to it in the future so as not to go beyond the stated scope of the project. Again, documenting your scope planning simplifies the process of managing any change that could be required in the project.
Sinnaps, an online project management tool will assist you in your scope planning to ensure that you achieve your project milestones. It is a planning tool with an ease of use feature that can be used to plan the execution of the tasks of your project.
Below is a scope planning example:
Triple G, a leading player in the Oil and Gas sector in Europe aims to increase its market share in the EU countries from 25% to 50% by 2030. As an organization, Triple G believes she can achieve this by expanding its pipeline operations to all EU countries with the expansion of the existing oil and gas pipelines and construction of new pipeline routes to countries where she is not presently operating.
To get this done, she aims to get the necessary approval and permits from the EU member nations. The project is expected to commence after the necessary approval and permits have been secured. The project will be executed under the best engineering practices and regulations.
The expansion project will be executed at $500, 000,000 and it will be undertaken by our engineering project team led by Engineer Patrick Johnson and our partners across Europe.
All about Project Scope:
- Scope: Definition
- Scope Creep
- Project Scope Statement
- Project Scope Example
- Scope of Work in Construction
- Scope of Work Example
- Scope Creep in Project Management
- Project Scope Management
- Scope Management Plan
- Scope Creep Example
Project scope planning: how to go about it
Project scope planning is a vital tool for project managers, it helps you to identify the required work to be done in a project, the important deliverables, and the outcomes expected from it.
Besides, project scope planning helps the project team to create the work breakdown structure for the tasks to be carried out in the project. This assists them in achieving ease in managing their projects.
Again, project scope planning assists you in allocating the project resources in a proper manner that allows the quick execution of the project. Risk management is crucial in project management because it helps in identifying the constraints that could pose a threat to the project.
With project scope planning, you can easily determine the risks of your project and put measures in place to mitigate them.
Project scope planning allows you and your team to do the following:
- It offers effective planning of the process that defines the work to be done in a project.
- It establishes a system that controls and monitors the processes.
- It helps in the documentation and tracking of the project to avoid scope creep while managing changes in the project scope.
- It helps in establishing an audit of project deliverables and assessment of the project outcome against the plan.
How to carry out project scope planning
The following steps will assist you in creating the project scope planning:
- Ask for the project requirements from the relevant stakeholders
- Identify the objectives and goals of your project in a comprehensive scope statement
- Design the work breakdown structure that lists the activities required to complete the project.
- List and assign roles and responsibilities to your project team members.
- Create the process for approval of the deliverables of the project.
- Establish a measure to document and control change requests to the scope.
Look no further, Sinnaps will assist you in the process of designing the project scope planning for your team. It will create it in a manner that will optimize the resources and schedules of the project.
Scope of planning in management
The scope of planning in management is a practice for effective planning and delivery of quality projects to the client. In creating the scope of planning in management for your project, the following parameters must be considered;
- Enterprise environmental factors: these are factors that can influence how the scope planning is defined, controlled, verified, and managed.
- Organizational process assets: these offer information related to the existing policies, organizational procedure, historical records, and lessons derived from past projects. With this, the project team is provided with the right information to design a scope of planning in the management of the project painstakingly.
- Project charter: in the scope of planning in management, the project charter is a document issued by the sponsor that authorizes the project’s existence formally and it gives the project team the power to commit resources of the organization to activities of the project.
- Preliminary project scope statement: this defines the project and what is to be done in it. It states the product requirements and boundaries.
- Project management plan: it is the formal document approved that details the structure and outline for the project scope management plan. Scope verification project management plan (scope verification PMP) describes the process for the verification of the completed project deliverables and the work breakdown structure.
Without mincing words, the role that scope planning plays in the success of your projects cannot be over-emphasized. As a project manager, you must ensure that you carefully design the scope plan before embarking on the project. This is because it will save you and your team a lot of stress in the process and it also simplifies the task of achieving the desired outcome from the projects.