Project Scope Management Is Important Aspect Information Technology Essay

There are also many reasons why projects failed or are terminated halfway because of not having project scope management. Some of the reasons why projects fails are because of the lack of planning, no quality control, bad communication with customer, teams members are not able to see the timeline, there’s no version control for the documents if there are any changes made and many other reasons

In this report there are also examples of why project failed and the reasons for the failure and by looking at the reasons it may help organisation to learn from the mistakes made and also to improve their own strategies. Although project scope management is a difficult task but it will really help the organisation to have successful projects.

Project scope management which includes the processes that are involved in defining and controlling what is included and what is not included in a project. It is very essential that the project team and the stakeholders have the same understanding that what will be the product that will be produce and also what are the processes that the project team will be using to produce them.

Scope planning

Scope definition

Creating the Work Breakdown Structure

Scope verification

Scope control

“(Schwalbe, 2007, p.182) states that the first step in project scope management is scope planning. The project’s size, complexity, importance, and other factors will affect how much effort is spent on scope planning and the main output is a project scope management plan and the tools and techniques are templates forms, standards as well as expert judgment.”

The key stakeholders, especially the project sponsor, potential suppliers and the users of the project deliverables will need to review the scope statement and the versions must be clearly labelled so that everyone will be using the recent ones.

The WBS will be reviewed by the project sponsor and the steering committee where all the work required completing the project is included.

For verifying successful completion of project deliverables, a process must be developed where the project manager will have to work with the sponsor and steering committee.

If there are any changes to the project scope, a change request form must be completed and must be reviewed by the designated group.

“According to (Schwalbe, 2007, p.186), the next step in project scope management is to define the work required for the project further. Good scope definition is very important to project success because it helps to improve the accuracy of time, cost and resource estimates, it defines a baselines for performance measurement and project control and it aides in communicating clear work responsibilities.”

Process

Scope Definition

Inputs

Preliminary Project Scope Statement,

Project Charter,

Organisational Process Assets,

Approved Change Requests,

Project Scope Management Plan

Tools and Techniques

Analysing Products,

Identifying Alternative Approaches,

Understanding & Analysing Stakeholder needs,

Using Expert Judgment

Outputs

Project Scope Definition,

Requested Changes,

Updates Project Scope Management Plan

The preliminary and project scope statement are often referred to related documents such as product specifications, products brochures or other plans. It is important to have an up-to-date project scope statements in order to develop a common understanding of the project scope.

A work breakdown structure is a deliverable-orientated grouping of the work involved in a project that defines the total scope of the project. In project management, the work breakdown structure is a foundation document which provides the basis for planning and managing project schedules, costs, resource and changes.

Process

Creating Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Inputs

Project Scope Statement,

Project Scope Management Plan

Tools and Techniques

WBS Templates,

Decomposition

Outputs

Work Breakdown Structure,

Work Breakdown Structure Dictionary,

Scope Baseline,

Updated Project Scope Statement,

Updated Project Scope Management Plan

According to (Schwalbe, 2007, p.189), since the WBS defines the total scope of the project, some project management experts believe that work should not be done on a project if it is not included in the WBS. Therefore, it is crucial to develop a good WBS.

Review WBSs of similar projects and tailor to your project.

To start with the largest items of the project and than break them into subordinate items. It involves the process of refining the work into greater and greater level of details.

The team members must very identify as many specific tasks related to the project as possible. The specific task is than aggregated and organise them into summary activities or higher level in the Work Breakdown Structure.

It is a technique that uses branches radiating out from a core idea to structure thoughts and ideas which allows people to write and even draw pictures of ideas in a nonlinear format

The Work Breakdown Structure is a format based on the needs of the project. The scope baseline is formed on the basis of the approved project scope statement and its associated Work Breakdown Structure and Work Breakdown Structure dictionary. Performance in meeting project scope goals is based on this scope baseline.

Scope verification involves the acceptance of the completed project scope by the stakeholders which means to the customer must inspect and than sign off the key deliverables.

Process

Scope Verification

Inputs

Project Scope Statement,

Project Scope Management Plan,

Work Breakdown Structure,

Work Breakdown Structure Dictionary,

Deliverables

Tools and Techniques

Inspection

Outputs

Accepted Deliverables,

Requested Changes,

Recommended Corrective Actions

It is crucial to do a good job of configuration management and verifying project scope to minimise scope changes.

“According to (Schwalbe, 2007, p.203) ,the goal of scope control is to influence the factors that cause scope changes, assures changes are processed according to procedures developed as part of integrated change control and manage changes when they occur. You cannot do a good job of scope control if you do not first do a good job of scope definition and verification.”

Stakeholders should be encourages to suggest changes to the overall project if it is of any benefit but to discouraged the stakeholders from suggesting unnecessary changes.

Process

Scope Control

Inputs

Project Scope Statement,

Project Scope Management Plan,

Work Breakdown Structure,

Work Breakdown Structure Dictionary,

Performance Reports,

Work Performance Information,

Approved Change Request

Tools and Techniques

Change Control System,

Configuration Management,

Replanning Project Scope,

Performance Variance Analysis

Outputs

Requested Changes,

Recommended Corrective Actions,

Updated Project Scope Statement,

Updated Project Scope Management Plan,

Updated Work Breakdown Structure

Updated Work Breakdown Structure Dictionary,

Updated Scope Baseline,

Updated Organisational Process Assets

It is crucial for information technology project managers and their teams to work to improve user inputs and to reduce incomplete and changing requirements and specifications to avoid project failures.

There are many reasons why some IT projects fails and why some of them succeed. There are many other factors other than project scope management that decides whether a project will succeed or fail such as time management, cost management, quality management, risk management and etc.

Successful IT Projects

Cost of the

Programme/Project

Transport for London: To reduce the traffic congestion in central London, the congestion charge was introduces where a flat rate fee was charge to the drivers entering the congestion zone during the weekdays.

City of Anaheim: The Enterprise Virtual Operations Center brings together the real time data from the City of Anaheim’s emergency services and also makes the data securely accessible via the Internet, so that city officials are able to see what is happening on all the City’s critical response fronts.

£234 million

US$1.2 million

Unsuccessful IT Projects

Reasons for the failure

McDonald’s Restaurants: In 2001, a project was initiated to create an intranet that would be connected to its headquarters to all the restaurants to provide detailed operational information in real time for example if the grill temperature is correct in every single store.

UK Cabinet Office: A data center which was worth £83 million was scrapped and a managed hosting project called True North was also axed.

UK Ministry of Justice: Had spent £4.3 million on the National Enforcement Tracker System but it was cancelled in August 2007.

The project was too large in scale and scope and therefore after spending $170 million on the consultants and initial implementation planning, they realise it was too hard to handle and terminated it.

Contract Breaches

It was judged that the system could no longer provide value for money.

The reason why many IT projects fail because the project success is not defined at the start of every project and any minor mistake made could lead to a project being fail. It is important for the project deliverables to be of high quality at least 90% detect free or the cost of the project must be within 10% of the budgeted amount, plus or minus for the project to be a success.

The scope of the project is the most difficult and important aspects of the project management. Therefore the scope of the project must be defined because it refers to all the work that is involved to create the products of the project an also the processes that are used to create them. It is important to only define and control what is included and what is not included in a project. Both the project team and the stakeholders should have the same common understanding of what the product will be and what are the processes that will be used in order to produce them.

Clear documentation of the project’s products must be developed and also the procedures to ensure that they were correctly completed and satisfactorily so that they be able to receive formal acceptance of the project scope. Decisions and information that becomes available related to project scope should be updated in the project scope statement. To solicit and monitor changes to the project scope, a good process must be developed.

The reason why many IT projects fail because the project success is not defined at the start of every project and any minor mistake made could lead to a project being fail. It is also crucial for information technology project managers and their teams to work to improve user inputs and to reduce incomplete and changing requirements and specifications to avoid project failures.