I Am Currently Working On My INFT3100 Project Management Essay.

Project Management is the knowledge base which we can use in the practical life to complete the project on time, cost, and quality. To complete any project successfully, all the steps and stages of the project management needs to be done properly. The main knowledge areas which we always need to perform during the project management process are ‘Integration management’, ‘Scope management’, ‘Time management’, ‘Quality management’, ‘Human resource management’, ‘Procurement Management’, ‘Communication management’ and ‘Risk management’ (Project Management Institute, 2013). But now in this report, we shall study in detail the benefits, features, and application of all the subgroups of the Scope Management plan only.

Scope management is one of the phases in Project Management. Extension Management gives data with respect to the extent of the task and the main extent of the venture, which is the out of degree things are additionally distinguished however not itemized out. For the effective finish of the venture, this stage is exceptionally significant, in light of the fact that it keeps the task from going past the extent of work which isn't required to finish the undertaking and thus keeps from bringing about more consumption then important to finish the task. The extension administration additionally helps in decreasing the firefighting movement which by and large Project Manager does if there should arise an occurrence of the aimless arranging of the venture scope. The best possible degree administration dependably helps in characterizing the extent of work or the limits of the work with the goal that no one of the venture group ever ponders the work which isn't required to be improved the situation the undertaking and it naturally enhances the profitability and decreases the cost of building up the task.

Independent of the nature, measure, area, many-sided quality, sort and target of the task, the Scope Management process is required to be directed for every one of the activities. The degree administration process essentially covers two out of five process gatherings of the venture administration. Two process groups being covered by the scope management are ‘Planning Process Group’ and ‘Monitoring and Controlling Process Group’ (Burshan, 2016). In further readings, the more detailed analysis of these groups shall be discussed. 

This stage of project management covers the scope-related issues and justifications; the scope is developed on the basis of the project’s aim, objectives and stakeholder’s requirement list. This is to just brief the whole process of scope management, it first identifies the requirement, then on the basis of requirement finalizes the scope and then monitor and control it to prevent from getting increased during the total project lifecycle. Now we shall discuss various categories and subgroups of the scope management which as a whole develops the project scope and how it can be managed through the project duration (PM PrepCast, 2016). The subgroups are:

The main ever venture of the scope administration arrange is to design the means or the way toward arranging and dealing with the extent of the task. This progression or the archive should give the data with respect to the techniques for building up the scope and then how to verify it during the project execution and monitoring stage to control and prevent from getting unnecessary increment. To develop any process we always need something as raw material and the few tools to resolve them so that we can get the best and desired output. The figure below

Figure 1: Plan Scope Management 

Source: (CertChamp, 2017)

represents the process of the project scope management. In planning scope management or developing the scope management plans the inputs for the process are the previously developed ‘Overall Project Management Plan’ and ‘Project Charter’ to take the inputs of the projects requirement and the overall aim and objective of the project. By considering the overall aim and objective, the scope management plan can be developed, but we need to also consider the project environment and the SWOT analysis of the organization are also required to be done to understand the ‘Enterprise Environmental Factors’ and ‘Organizational Process Assets’. The environmental factors are important to assess the weakness and strength of the enterprise so that the weaknesses can be offloaded to some third party, and the strength of the enterprise can be enhanced to increase the quality of the product and at the same time control the project duration too. So the type of project, its type of requirement and the return on the invested fund for the project can become the important factors to decide the type of the scope management planning or the stages we shall consider for the planning (Ogunber et al., 2016). Likewise, according to the business area of operation, the anticipating the extension administration process which we can embrace for the task exclusively relies upon the kind of the undertaking and the item result or the goal of the venture. Then we can use various tools like ‘Expert Judgment’ and the ‘Meetings’ to finalize the process of developing the scope and it’s controlling processed and document them to develop the scope and requirement management plan. The document shall be used as a baseline for the further stages of project scope management.

The identification of requirements and fixing the traceability matrix are the outputs of this process (refer figure below). During this stage, the inputs like scope management plan developed

Figure 2: Identify the requirement 

Source: (CertChamp, 2017) 

in the earlier stage furthermore, the prerequisite administration design alongside partner enlist and the administration design is utilized to infer the necessities of the task. The ID of the prerequisites is the piece of ‘Planning Process Group’ of the task administration forms. This is one of the underlying works of the venture where the requirements are first identified by the stakeholders. The stakeholders are being approached and the requirements are documented according to the stakeholder management plan. Stakeholder management plans provide the stakeholder analysis report where it is clearly defined that which stakeholders we need to manage up to how much stretch (Fageha & Aibinu, 2013). For example, if the requirement is coming from the sponsor and the other requirement received from the lowermost level of the organization that does not have much involvement in the project, then we need to always capture the requirements provided by the sponsor.

This process captures the stakeholder’s expectations and then further categorizing them in various categories to plan define them properly for the further developing of scope and the way to carry forward during the execution stage.  The requirement developed from the process can be further categorized as the ‘Business requirements’, ‘Stakeholder’s requirements’, ‘product requirements’, and the ‘Temporary requirement’ which are required to fulfill the overall requirements or the job (Jainendrakumar, 2015). The business requirements are the very high level and are mainly the aim and objective of the project along with the MOV metrics. Stakeholder’s requirements are their expectation; product requirement is the activities which are required to be executed to have some features of the product or the services. Finally, the temporary requirements are required to be documented to complete the overall project activities like the ordering and receiving of consumables in case of construction projects.

There are various tools used to gather information and documenting the requirements, but which tools to choose totally depends on the type of the project and the level of detailing is required to be done before finalizing the scope. Normally for any kind of project, we can always use ‘Interview’ and ‘Facilitated Workshops’ can be conducted between the subject experts or by recruiting some external expert and document the overall requirement from the project objective and aim. Tools like ‘Prototyping’ and ‘Questionnaires and surveys’ can be used for developing the requirement of typical automation or IT related projects. Few other tools are ‘Focus group’, ‘group creativity techniques’, ‘Decision making techniques’, ‘observations’, ‘Benchmarking’, ‘Context diagram’, and ‘document analysis’, which can be used for such different categories of projects and develop the requirements along with its traceability matrix (Wich, 2009).

This is the third step of the undertaking degree administration process where we characterize the extension and finish it from the prior created necessity records and the ‘Scope management plan’ and ‘project charter’ along with the ‘Organizational process assets’ to gather some historical data or information regarding similar projects. The scope can be defined properly, once the previously discussed phases of the scope administration plan is developed along with few details of other process groups like ‘formation of project team’, ‘high-level budget is almost finalized’ and ‘even the bid is almost on the verge of finalization’ (Khan, 2006). The below figure listed some of the  tools and techniques which help to characterize the extent of the task and build up the 'Undertaking extension articulation' and the updates of the degree report. The updates to the record are required to be done if there should be an occurrence of any adjustment in scope, which has happened and is required to be executed during the execution stage, which we shall discuss in upcoming topics.

Various tools and techniques which are used to define the scope from the requirements finalized are ‘Expert judgment’, where we can gather the experts under a roof and get the scope defined by using their experience. The experts can be internal or external. The internal experts are the stakeholders or the employees of the organization itself, whereas the external experts are the consultants hired for the job. Another tool is ‘Product Analysis’ where some of the value engineering is done to minimize or optimize the requirements to have control on the expenditures by developing some smart solutions to the requirements and fulfill the requirement with some common facility itself and prevent from duplicating the features to prevent from developing the exhaustive project cost. Then the next tool which can also be used is ‘Alternative identification’, as the name suggests by using this tool, the other alternatives of executing the project can be defined. Various techniques like ‘brainstorming’ and ‘apple to apple comparison’ can be used to define the scope by adopting some other alternative and gathering the information regarding the project success from some historical document or information available and then do some brainstorming before finalizing and defining the scope statement.

Developing up an appropriate Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is the need of the venture to get a fruitful conclusion, and to describe the extent of work with the goal that they can be effectively appointed to enterprise units (Devi & Reddy, 2012). The WBS might be viewed as the scientific classification of any project. A few conceivable examples of WBS can be created, regardless of the way that every one of them portrays a similar project. In any case, unique WBS designs call for various hierarchical structures and administration styles amid project execution (Lee et al., 2010). Subsequently, the WBS creator as of now significantly affects how any project is to be overseen at the beginning period. In some cases, the bungle between the task WBS, the structure of the organization, and the management style of the project supervisor negatively affects the probability of the task being finished effectively. The figure below is showing the various inputs, tools and techniques, and the outputs of the process involved in developing the WBS of any project.

Developing the WBS is still in the ‘Planning Process Group’ of the project administration an after we build up the WBS, the degree administration should reach to the observing and controlling procedure gathering of the venture administration. With all the common inputs as we discussed in previous steps, the new input is ‘Project Scope Statement’ developed in the earlier stage. Various tools which are used to develop the WBS are ‘Expert Judgment’ and ‘Decomposition’ of the overall scope of work into manageable subgroups up to various levels. The last level of the WBS is called the ‘Work Package’ which consists of many activities. Developing the WBS exactly as per the scope requirement and the way the organization wants to execute the undertaking is imperative to give the unmistakable comprehension of the task scope.

WBS additionally helps in giving a reasonable perspective of the cost heads as well and screens the cost of the task appropriately (Polonski, 2015). The general cost or the financial plan of the task can be additionally isolated as WBS and the progress or the expenditures can be monitored properly especially by the top management or executive level officials of the organization. WBS is the establishment of the general venture, it should be produced circumspectly and shrewdly to cover the general extent of work as per the execution rationality (Brotherton et al., 2008).

Now we entered the ‘Monitoring and Controlling Process group’ of the project, where the defined scope of work is being verified at every stage and after the completion of execution of each and every step of the project. All the inputs of the process are the documents developed and discussed so far and the deliverables being developed during each execution stages. The verification of scope at every stage is very much required to prevent the project from getting scope creep and reducing the rework or undoing the work which is already done and that too in the wrong direction (Hans, 2013). The figure below has shown the inputs and the tool & techniques which can be used for verifying the scope of work are the ‘Inspection’ and ‘Decision making’. Under this stage or process of work, the scope is being verified against the scope baseline or the scope statement developed to compare the result and move to the next level of the scope management that is the ‘Scope Control’, where the required changes can be done using the change management process. So, the scope verification will just provide the justification that whether the deliverable developed during the execution is acceptable or not. Since the scope verification is concerned with the acceptance of the deliverable, so it also related with the other process group and knowledge area that is ‘Quality Control’. In QC, the deliverable is getting passed through the quality checks and then the verification against the baseline is done and confirmed for the completion of the deliverable. The deliverable once accepted can directly be moved to the ‘Project Close-out process group’ for closing the project or the part of the project.

This is the last phase of the task scope administration, where the benchmark of the undertaking is being controlled using the variance analysis mathematical technique (refer figure below) and the outcome of the process is the ‘Change Request’ shutting the venture or the piece of the undertaking. This is the last phase of the task scope administration, where the benchmark of the undertaking is being, the probability of getting scope changes also increases (Léger et al., 2013). Because of the inability to view or finalize the project requirement from the early stage and it gets clarified along with the progressive elaboration (which is a characteristic of the project).

This step is required to control the scope and prevent the scope from getting gold plated. ‘Gold plating’ is the process by which the project scope is being refined at every step to develop the product with more features, so to manage the most elevated amount of the element in the item the extent of the venture continues expanding (Najjar & Jarbi, 2016). the most elevated amount of the element in the item the extent of the venture continues expanding resource overrun, the resource gets frustrated due to excessive pressure on them to complete the job in the defined time frame or the schedule of the job and then it may raise the concern of high risk in health, safety, and environment of the workers.

The change request which gets generated by this proves is then passed through a strict path or the procedure as defined in the scope management plan regarding the control of scope in case of any overshooting due to whatever reason and whoever’s responsible. The impacts of these changes are calculated by the Project Control Department to assess the overall impact on the project time and cost.  

Scope being one of the triple constraints of the project, is a very crucial factor which is required to be planned and executed well by the Project Team to deliver a successful project and remain within the budgeted time and cost and quality and results in developing the satisfaction level of the customers (TIMO - Time Management Office GmbH, 2014).

So this is to conclude, that the scope of a project, can be defined after the proper finalization of requirement which is received and refined by the Project Team from the listed stakeholders as per the stakeholder register. Now once the scope is defined, WBS is developed to decompose the overall scope of work to lower levels of proper management of the scope during execution stage and help to monitor the progress at different hierarchical levels of the project. WBS has many advantages, but it is required to be developed very smartly by the Project Manager to follow the execution-style and philosophy, else it can cause the project to fail. The WBS should cover the overall scope of work, and nothing should be missed out, else the particular scope item can be missed from the project and shall become a problem at the later stage.

After the WBS is developed, the output goes to different knowledge area ‘Time management’ for further development of project schedule. In scope management, the next stage is Verification and Controlling, where the scope of work is being verified by conducting the inspection of the deliverables and if found acceptable the deliverable can be moved to the project close-out stage.

Finally, the scope control is the process where the change management is executed. The additional scope required to complete the project is assessed by the Project Manager and approved by the Project Sponsor.

The project scope management process is very much helpful for my professional life and will definitely help me in developing the skill of properly developing and managing the scope of the project. 

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