All the processes that are needed to ensure that the project contains all the tasks and activities that lead to the desired outcome and produces the required deliverables are called a “scope management plan template“.
It also excludes the unnecessary tasks and steps that may mislead the course of the project. The main aim of a scoping plan is to explain how the project scope is written, developed, verified, and updated.
What are the Components of a Scope Management Plan?
The Contents of the Scope Management Plan Template
- Input: the processes and information we need to start the respective phase
- Tools and techniques: the concepts and terms and references used in the phase
- Outputs: final documents or deliverables for the phase, these may be inputs for the next phase
Inputs of Scope management
Project Charter
The statement of objectives defines the projects, goals, roles and responsibilities, identification of stakeholders, etc. A project charter provides a required framework for planning a scope management plan. It gives a view of high-level project descriptions and product characteristics given in the project statement of work.
Project Management Plan
The underlying processes in the project management plan influence the scope management which shape-up the planning and scope of a project. It is a baseline for scope management.
The Plans under the Project Management Plan are as follows:
Enterprise Environmental Factors
Enterprise environmental factors are considered the most important and are usually used as inputs to most of the processes. The outcome of project management can be positive or adverse depending on Enterprise environmental factors.
These Factors Include:
- Organization’s culture
- Infrastructure
- Personal administration
- Marketplace conditions
Organizational Process Assets
There are two kinds of Organizational process assets:
Processes and Procedures
The main features of process and procedure are
- Initiation
- Planning
- Executing
- Monitoring
- Controlling and closing
A successful project must be built upon these plans as they monitor all the incidents happening in a project’s life cycle. A good project manager should always consider these while writing the scope of the project.
Corporate Knowledge Base
based on the following features, the corporate knowledge base drafts a scope management plan template:
- Configuration management knowledge bases
- Financial databases
- Historical information and lessons learned knowledge bases
- Issue and defect management databases
- Process measurement databases
- Project files from the previous project
What are the Tools and Techniques of the Project Scope process?
The tools and techniques that are used in scope management are:
Expert judgment
In order to create an efficient scope plan, the manager needs to take input and feedback from the experts in the field and the stakeholders as to what they want the project manager to implement in the scope.
This will also help in overcoming hurdles and issues if and when they arise because it has insights from experts and professionals in the same field.
Data analysis
This includes gathering information from various resources about project requirements. in order to create an accurate project and product scope, create products,s and finally validate and control the project scope.
Meetings
Meetings for selected stakeholders, team members, project managers, and sponsors should be conducted in order to get their take on the scope of the project.
Outputs of Scope Management Plan
The whole process of the Scope plan produces the following outputs:
Project Scope Plan
The scope management plan template is the plan template that defines how the scope of the project will be created, executed, monitored, controlled, and verified, that’s why it is a very important input for the next phase I.e., the development of the project plan phase. The scope management will be the baseline for the project planning ahead.
The Components of the Scope Management Plan are:
- The process to prepare a detailed scope statement
- The process that allows creating WBS from the detailed project scope statement
- The process that establishes how the WBS will be maintained and approved
- The process that explains how formal acceptance of completed project deliverables are to be obtained
- The process to control the requests for changes to the detailed project scope statement will be documented.
Requirements Management Plan
The process defines how requirements will be analyzed, documented, and managed. The relation between requirements and documents is rightly chosen in the requirement management plan.
The Main Components of Scope Management Plan
- How the requirement activities are planned, tracked, and reported.
- How the changes to the product will be initiated.
- The procedures required for analyzing the impacts, and methods used to trace and report the issues.
- Getting Details of the authorization levels that are required to approve the changes made.
- The conditions required to rank the implemented processes.
- Focusing on why and how the product metrics are being used.
- Traceability structure to reflect which requirement features will be captured on the traceability matrix.
Steps Included in a Scope Management Plan
- Identify stakeholders and get requirements.
- Create a project scope statement identifying the project’s goals and objectives.
- Create a work breakdown structure to map all the tasks.
- Develop the process to maintain and approve the work breakdown structure.
- Define the roles and responsibilities of the team.
- Implement the processes for proper acceptance of completed project deliverables.
- Define how to control and document changes and change requests against the scope statement.
Templates that Help/Assist in Scope Management
All the information and requirements are in bits and pieces and are difficult to assemble for the well-defined project scope. That is where the scope management plan template come in handy. Even though they are static documents they provide a structure to streamline the data and make sure you are not leaving out any valuable information.
Some Templates Are:
Project Plan Template
The best suitable project plan template will give you a place in the scope management to document the tasks and resources you will need in the project. The first part of the template lets you write the scope and reiterate it as defined in the charter.
Risk Register Template
An unrealized risk can ruin the flow of your project, in order to stay on track, you should always foresee the risks that may arise and write their solutions in the scope management plan. In a risk management plan template, all the possible risks, their solutions, and the person who is assigned to that risk are documented.
Change Log Template
Changes not only come from risks, but changes may also arise as the stakeholder decides he wants something different in the middle of the project.
Therefore there should be a proper process that captures and tracks such changes throughout the life cycle of the project. Change log template comes in handy for such issues.
Work Breakdown Structure Template
Work breakdown structure is a structural view of the project. It is a single unified visual that shows all the work in that process or project at one glance.
All the bigger tasks are divided into smaller and easily doable goals and work packages. A template can help in dividing and subdividing the tasks based on the plan.
Scope Management Plan Template is a crucial document used in project management to outline how the scope of a project will be defined, monitored, and controlled throughout its lifecycle.
The primary purpose of this plan is to ensure that the project stays on track, delivering the intended results within the agreed-upon boundaries.
