Project Management for Small Business by Joseph Phillips

Author:Joseph Phillips [Phillips, Joseph PMP]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AMACOM
Published: 2018-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Protecting the Project Scope from Changes

The project scope is everything that the project must create in order to declare the project completed. The creations of the project work are the actual built, delivered, and completed project requirements for the project customer—they are what the customer has hired you to do for him. Because every project is different, what your company creates for your customers is entirely different from what my company creates for my customers. However, while our projects may be different, the concept of the project scope is the same; the fulfillment of the project scope equates to a completed project, and completed projects equate to profits for your company. If the project scope is not controlled, then your profits are jeopardized.

Controlling the project scope is one of the core project management duties. Controlling the project scope means that the project requirements have been clearly identified, agreed upon, and communicated to the project team. I realize that I’ve stressed this concept several times, but it is, in my experience, the primary reason why a project slips out of control, chaos takes over the project, and the project fails. Controlling the project scope can happen only when the requirements for the project scope have been clearly and accurately defined. Once the project scope has been agreed upon by the project stakeholders, particularly the project customer, the work breakdown structure (WBS) is created and the members of the project team can get to work on their assignments. This is when change control begins.

Even with clearly defined requirements, there are still several reasons why change may enter a project. There are two categories of changes that affect controlling the project scope: approved changes and unapproved changes. Unapproved changes are the worst type of changes, as they steal project time and money to create things that the project never called for. Unapproved changes generally include defects in the project work, scope creep by the project team, and gold plating.

Gold plating occurs when the the project manager adds unapproved deliverables to the project scope in an effort to consume the entire project budget. It happens when the project scope has been met, but there are still funds available to the project. Rather than surrender the funds to the client, the project manager adds features to generate more income without the customer’s consent to the scope additions.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.