Overview of Scope Management: Input / Tools & Techniques / Output

Project scope management is the primary knowledge area out of ten knowledge areas in PMBOK which includes the processes required to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully. A project scope management can help you to understand what the client or the customer is looking for as deliverable, in other words, It is primarily concerned with defining and controlling what is or is not included in the project.

The Figure below provides an overview of the major project scope management processes:

1. Plan Scope Management – It is where you create a scope management plan with which one can define, validate and control the project scope. This process provides guidance and direction for managing scope across the project.
2. Collect Requirements – it is where you collect requirements from all stakeholders who you have identified as an impact on the project. You need to identify the stakeholder to collect requirement and create a Requirement Traceability matrix using different ways to collect requirement from stakeholders.
3. Define Scope – it is where the project manager will define the actual work that needs to be performed to meet project objectives. It is the responsibility of the project manager to define the scope after accessing and understanding the complete goals, requirements and objectives gathered from the stakeholder. The output would be the project scope statement.
4. Create WBS – WBS is an important term where a project manager would be interested in. Known as Work Breakdown Structure. Where in project scope management, all the work that needs to be done to achieve goals is determined. Where in WBS, a Project manager will have to divide into manageable tasks. Typically, the lowest level of WBS is said to be WPL ( Work Package Level )
5. Verify Scope – it is where the results provided by the scope and WBS are aligning with the quality. All the deliverables will be validated by the client or management to foresee the project is processing as planned after “Perform Quality Control”.
6. Control Scope – it is where a project manager has to be efficient in dealing with Time and Cost and calculate how does it impact the project and its process. A project manager has to handle and balance the scope baselines as it is subjected to be changed by the stakeholders or the customer during various expected and unexpected situations.

Processes of Project Scope Management involved in Processes Groups

By relating the six process of project scope management knowledge areas against the Process Groups, the project scope management has major role only in two process groups:

• Planning process group
• monitoring & controlling

In the initial stage of a project, Scope will be or might be limited, as work progress goes, Project scope management helps to maintain and balance the scope baselines.

Overview of Project Scope Management

Project scope management is the second knowledge area in PMBOK. As a project manager, you must understand the importance of project scope that helps you ensure all of the required work (and only the required work!) is included in the project. As mentioned above, Project Scope Management has six processes in PMBOK, each of these processes associated with a set of inputs, tools & techniques and outputs as shown in the Figure below:

Project Scope Management Processes: Inputs / Tools & Techniques / Outputs

Each of those 47 processes described in greater detail inside PMBOK® is represented in an Inputs – Tools & Techniques – Outputs diagram like the one below emphasizing that each process consumes input artifacts and produces output artifacts.

Take the first process in the Scope Management knowledge area as an example, “process 5.1 Plan Scope Management” which is the process of creating a scope management plan that documents how the project scope will be defined, validated, and controlled. The key benefit of this process is that it provides guidance and direction on how scope will be managed throughout the project. The inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs of this process are depicted in the mind map as shown in the following.

As shown in the mindmap above, the project planning team can produce two main output namely, the Scope Management Plan and the Requirements Management Plan, based on the input documentation developed previously and applying the tools and techniques of consulting with knowledgeable experts (expert judgment) and the team (in the meetings).