Hello readers, welcome back to another edition of Fuzzy Friday.
In today’s article, I would like to talk about the project scope, and its all-time associate, the product scope. These two are key elements to the success of the project and are topics which many people get confused about, or forget to differentiate, in the busy world of projects and project execution.
So, let’s begin with Project Scope. The project scope is one of the three main branches of basic project management theory known as the Triple Constraint – Scope, Time, Cost . (see below image) The scope specifically refers to the series of steps to take in order to complete the task the project was created to achieve – it may be a product, a service or any other type of change required for a certain perceived benefit.
Project Triple Constraint Triangle
The Project Scope, in other words, refers to the “how” the project will be planned, executed and measured, as a whole, to make that “product” possible, and what tools are required to be implemented and managed around to make things happen (documents, tables, spreadsheets, registers, meeting agendas, etc). It captures all the managerial aspects of the project governance to make possible that the “product” (whatever it is) is delivered to the client (whoever this may be) within expectations of quality, time, costs, and any other metrics used to control and measure project success.
Now, the product scope, which sometimes gets missed/confused/forgotten in the whole project mix, contains all the steps required to make that “product” possible. This means that the product scope is the “what” – what is the product about? What are its components? What will it do? What appearance would it have? What stakeholders are required for its creation? Etc. The list of “whats” will contain many more questions depending on the difficulty and complexity of the “product” to be delivered.
For example, if the product is a new warehouse building, the product scope will capture all the technical aspects of it such as how high the ceiling will be, its length and width, slab strength, min. wind resistance, etc. However, if the product is a service, this can be measured on the characteristics and expected responsibilities covered by the people delivering those services.
This is it for now, but I’ll cover more detail in another Fuzzy Friday. I hope the information above brings some light in the differentiation of the two project scopes and help you define these better in your next project.
Have a nice weekend.
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