Project Management Primer #5 - How to Define a Project's Scope

You have to know what you are trying to do!

This seems obvious, but lack of clarity in the early stages of a project is very common and causes many problems. Many projects start up with vague or ill defined ideas of what they want to achieve.

If you hope to deliver a successful project in a finite amount of time you need to determine the final state your product must achieve, you need to set yourself a concrete goal.

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If you have an infinite amount of time you could simply try one solution after another until you hit upon the best solution for your problem. This ‘inventive’ approach to product development can give rise to spectacular and unique solutions but more often than not ends in failure or inadequate results.

Also most of us don’t operate in environments where we have infinite amounts of time or resources. Most of us operate in an environment where we need to deliver a concrete in solution in a very finite period of time.

In order to do this we need a way to select the best solution from a range of possible approaches. The first and most important step in this process is defining what will actually constitute a success. Then we can evaluate all of the possibilities against our definition of success and find the best fit. Without this we’ll be shooting in the dark.

The more accurate you can define your objectives, the more likely you will be to succeed.

More Tutorials:

• 10 Truths for Successful Project Management

• Scope Triangle

• Critical Path

• The Mythical Man Month

• Defining the Project Scope

• Scope, Visions and Goals

• Using Project Goals to Filter Requirements

• Difference between a Business Case and Project Proposal?

• Return on Investment

• Requirements Specifications

Project Management Templates

Here are some Project Management templates you can get on our partner's site.

	The Change Management Kit provides the documentation required to control changes to the scope, deliverables and resources within the project. The Change Request template allows staff to raise a change request within the project.
	The Project Planning Kit provides you with all of the project management templates, documents and forms required to plan a project by helping you to schedule time, cost and resources.
	The Quality Management Kit includes a suite of templates used to assure and control the quality of deliverables within a project.
	Project Initiation Kit Start a new project by documenting a business case, undertaking a feasibility study, defining the project scope, recruiting key staff and locating them within a project office.
	Project Execution Kit Manage time, cost, quality, change, risks and issues during the execution of your project, as well as supplier procurement and customer acceptance.
	Project Closure Kit Helps close your project by handing over deliverables and documentation to the customer, terminating supplier contracts and releasing resources back to the business.