The Project Scope Statement is more than just a statement

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a statement as “a single declaration or remark”. The project scope statement includes more detail than our proverbial understanding of a statement as a single remark.

The project scope statement identifies all of the project’s deliverables and defines the work required to create the deliverables. In other words, it creates a common understanding of what needs to be achieved by all stakeholders and creates a framework for proposed changes to be effected within the project boundaries, to eliminate nice to haves from creeping into the project.

Often, careful and thoughtful consideration in the composition of the project scope statement is neglected, resulting in detrimental results to project budget, schedule, quality, and customer expectations, as the project advances.

Considerations for a project scope statement:

Project Objectives - Quantifiable goals that defines the project’s appropriateness to the project customer and the overall success of the project. Objectives must be detailed, quantifiable, aggressive, realistic, and time-sensitive.

Product Scope description – Describes what deliverables the project is creating. The product scope description is a work in progress as it starts off vague and is updated as the project work develops.

Project Requirements – Sets the parameters under which the project will operate and determines the acceptability criteria against which the deliverables are measured. These parameters are established by the customer and the performing organization.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Project Boundaries – Project boundaries establishes what is included in the project and what is excluded from it. Strict adherence to existing project boundaries leaves no room to engage in extra work that does not form part of the project scope.

Project Deliverables – These are all the things the project will create. But hang on, it does not only include the product it will create, but also all the documentation and documented experiences which can be used for future reference on similar projects.

Product Acceptance Criteria – It includes a list of requirements inclusive of the customer’s expectations that must be satisfied prior to acceptance of the completed product.

Project Constraints – Careful thought must to be put into identifying anything that will limit the project from successful completion. Constraints can include anything from a predetermined budget, available resources and materials, imposed dates, and contract conditions.

These are but some elements to consider for inclusion in the project scope description. From your perspective, do you think all of these are necessary?

Written by Hylton Ferreira.

Seven Habits for Highly Effective Project Risk Management

When it comes to project management, over the years, the role of the Project Manager (PM) has evolved. Every project, large or small, comes with its own set of risks. As competition for bids increases, the ability to anticipate, acknowledge and create an actionable plan to address these risks becomes one of the most important elements in a capital project proposal.

For a long time, the PM position was highly focused on just the individual’s technical expertise. This is no longer the case. With the acknowledgement that project risk management is a crucial component of any undertaking, comes the increased awareness that on-time completion and remaining within budget is more about the successful orchestration and facilitation of others, than it is about technical knowledge.

What does that mean exactly? A report on the subject entitled “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Project Managers” breaks down the habits that today’s successful PMs must learn in order to take their capital projects to the Best in Class level.

1) Be proactive: Anticipate potential problems and put an early warning system in place. This should include a detailed project plan, good cost accounting or production reports that show historical performance and a well-prepared timeline to monitor schedule risk.

2) Forecast completion: Begin a project with the end in mind. Firms are always looking at the forecast of the cost at completion and ensuring project trends are headed in the right direction. Setting key performance indicators via a dashboard or summary report is a great way to capture a picture of a project’s status at any time.

3) Prioritize the critical path: Be able to identify key items that need immediate attention and which do not. Set milestones for issues that have come up frequently in the past, for example, complications during the closeout phase of a project. Project risk management software is an easy and effective way to do this.

4) Collaborate: Effective PMs know how to connect people to solve a problem or complete a task. Because there are so many off-the-shelf project risk management databases that provide visibility throughout the organization, there is no excuse for everyone not to be on the same page.

5) Communicate often: Know how and when to communicate in the most effective manner. If it’s through email, in person, or both, establishing frequent and consistent correspondence will prove crucial to a project’s success.

6) Be accountable: The most successful PMs are so entrenched in their projects that any problem is their problem. The onus can’t be placed on anyone but the PM if a project is unsuccessful. This accountability can be achieved more successfully when senior management is actively involved in periodic, rigorous examination of the job’s status.

7) Continuous improvement: Best in Class project leaders are constantly looking for ways to improve. Frequent analysis of how well they are doing and how they might do better is paramount to continued success.

So there you have it: seven simple habits that will aid in effective project risk management – and the keys to make or maintain Best in Class status.

Article shared from The PM Coach.

About Chris Bell:

Having collaborated with technology titans such as Geoffrey Moore, Marty Cagan, Phil Meyers, and Keith Ferrazzi, Chris brings life and energy to technology and business topics such as Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and Governance Risk & Compliance (GRC). Chris is passionate about leveraging technology and is often found on the speaker circuit sharing innovative strategies to solve everyday business challenges. He is also a published author of many articles, whitepapers and books including EVM for Dummies.

Chris leads marketing strategy, brand strategy and marketing communications for Active Risk. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Mansfield University, and has completed graduate work at Boston University, Oklahoma State University.

Requirements Gathering in Project Management : Not Enough if not Prioritized or Ranked

This is a must read article by Gratien Gasaba on collecting project requirements, and most importantly, to keep perspective when collecting requirments. She writes for PM Hut:

“If you don’t know where you are going no road will take you there”.

To ensure that one is on the right road one needs to know where this road goes. But it serves for nothing if you don’t know where you are going. Assume you are in a bus station. You may be informed that bus number 1 will take the road to place A, bus number 2 to place B, bus number 3 to place C, etc. What criteria do you use to choose a right bus and to ensure you don’t get lost? The necessary and sufficient criterion is to know where you want to go. In the above illustrative particular case, if you want to go to the Place C, you will take the bus number 3 and exclude from your choice all other buses. In other words, if conductors of bus number 1 and bus number 2 try to convince you to take their respective buses, you will reply by a strong no, while to the conductor of the bus number 3 you will reply by an exclusive yes followed by your long strides toward the bus number3.

I have seen several project managers and project staffs complaining that the project beneficiaries are too inquisitive to the extent that it is impossible to know what they need. Complaints of this kind are warnings that the project is heading to failure. They signal a lack of focus. But who is responsible to clearly define and keep the project focus? What is the starting point towards what should be the real focus? Where and how can one gets information on what is needed to be done?
This article attempts to answer the above questions and highlight the importance of collecting requirements and actors involved in this exercise.

Collecting requirements is project manager centered

It is the project manager’s responsibility to ensure all stakeholders’ expectations are well collected and documented. After all, project managers are also required to manage stakeholders’ expectations as part of communication management. These expectations may be related to the project management or to the product of the project. When collected requirements are competing, the project manager is responsible to balance them. In fact, one of the most difficult challenges for project managers regarding scope management is to balance competing requirements and rank them by order of importance.

As project manager, do you have project requirements prioritized and ranked by order of importance? If so, congratulations! It’s a good start. If not, beware you may not be focusing the project resources to the right end!

Read full article by Gratien at PM Hut.