The in-Scope & Out-of-Scope

 

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The scope of any undertaking is difficult to define or describe as it’s a variable component.  Starting from the customer to the vendor, it’s always wisdom in hindsight. The foresight to envision the final figure is very subjective and can never be fixed or finalized in the first cut. Often improvisation on an incremental basis is inevitable. Change can’t be resisted and ought to be factored, which is referred as risk – the element of improbability. Uncertainty notwithstanding,a project scope management plan is prepared clearly laying out the components that help in defining, verifying and controlling scope and a work breakdown structure in tandem to get a firm grip.

If nailing the scope is near to impossible, then defining what constitutes in-scope and out-of-scope is painfully unmanageable. Assuming the scope is to build a mansion, the finer details are not captured on the frame. It’s not fair to expect the customer or business owner to come out with a document that records everything right to the last dot.  At best we can box and determine the lines but then it will be a bird’ view

Scope management is primarily concerned with defining and controlling what is and is not included in the project as stated in PMBOK. Please underscore ‘not included’.

Scope is the definition of boundary for the particular product or project from the existence of the product or Project. It brings the structure or shape to the product or Project and it can be named as abstract of the project.  Without scope, project or product will be in non-existence state and it’s the entry point for any project or product. 

One can visualize the product or project with the scope even before its existence. So it’s very critical and crucial how you define the scope of the product or project. It’s the vision of project owner or product owner which gets transformed as Scope document. Though the initial point is the vision or core objective which plays the critical role in scope definition, it’s the boundary which baselines the scope into proper shape.

Awareness of what we don’t want is also as much as important as what we want for a product or project. Unless you know the entire existence you will not be able to define what you want,  which means when you define the scope of the product or project, it’s all the more important to know what you don’t want to define as your scope.

In most cases, outside of the scope defines the scope inside. For example, I need a program to report my balance sheet every month.

Possible inputs:

1.       Feed all the credit and debits through data entry form

2.       Integrate my salary slip to get the credit and manual data entry for all expenses

3.       Integrate the bank statement for both debits and credits and make the manual entry only for cash credits/debits

Possible expectations:

1.       Generate the balance sheet report for Weekly/Monthly/Yearly

2.       Generate the reports in PDF/Excel

If I am sure that I don’t want any manual entry, then I should be able to strike out in the Possible Inputs as‘out of scope’ in my scope document.

We can discuss about scope creep and scope change in my next post.

I would like to hear your opinion and views to enhance knowledge about Scope. For more details visit www.icertglobal.com or reach me at info@icertglobal.com