Introduction
Every company or organization has a specific goal in mind. Although most people want to make money, more particular objectives are hidden beneath that broad desire. For instance, your company might be set up to sell a specific product or service or provide information on a particular subject. Whatever your organization’s goals are, you must take them to the next level. It’s similar to projects to a lesser extent. Projects are collaborations between organizations to achieve a specified destination. Instead of selling a specific product,’ a project may be started to design a new feature added to that product or service the following year. This, of course, is not one of the endless numbers of possible examples.
Whatever the project’s goal is, it must be defined and terminated as precisely as possible ahead of time. Scope management is a body of knowledge to ensure that a project includes everything necessary to execute a task as described and nothing else (Bergmann & Karwowski, 2018). It is unlikely to be completed if a project does not have all of its resources since it will be unprepared for future obstacles. Simultaneously, if a project has more resources than it requires, the result may be reached, but help will be wasted.
Finding the correct scope for a project is one of the most crucial aspects of its ultimate success. Everything else in the project can only be accomplished on time if the content is documented. The project’s resources come in various shapes and sizes, but they are all vital (Nicholas & Steyn, 2020). The project’s scope examines all of these resources to see if the project has everything it requires to meet its objectives. Project requirements must first be compiled and defined (WBS).
Employees — when putting together a new project, this is most likely the first resource to think about. Who will be assigned to these projects? Does the company already employ these individuals, or will additional team members be required? Is there any time available for current staff to work on this project directly? These and other questions must be addressed when assembling the project team. Finding the right team is essential for a project’s ‘getting right.’
Budget — many projects contain a budget for expenses that aren’t covered by the project budget, such as wages (Richardson & Jackson, 2018). Using our earlier example of a new feature to add to a product, obtaining items that would fit into that new feature may incur some costs. The project’s overall scope also influences budgeting for used and new equipment.
Time — in business, time is money, as they say. The organization will be more expensive if the project takes too long to accomplish. A timeline that specifies the scope of work in a project should be in place when initially designed. A job could, for example, be planned for one month or a year or more (Antony & Gupta, 2018). Because time and money are inextricably linked, forecasting a project’s duration is critical for cost control.
Goal – The project’s purpose from the start is another crucial aspect of the project scope. As the project continues, this can be forgotten, and the end product may be more than the anticipated range (Antony & Gupta, 2018). Instead of building a new feature for an existing product, the team might create an entirely new product by starting from the top with that model. It is clearly outside the project’s scope, whether that is good or negative.
The essence of project scope management
The phrase “scope” in project management refers to product, project, and project content. Project content management is used to determine, approve, and regulate the implementation of the needed amount of project work to ensure successful project implementation and product development in compliance with the planned parameters and client needs (Alnaggar & Pitt, 2018). According to ISO 21500, project scope management considers content description, project structure, job structure description, and content. By examining the end project situation, a project scope definition identifies the project scope, purpose, outcomes, needs, and restrictions. Determining project content indicates a project’s contribution to achieving critical business goals (Nicholas & Steyn, 2020). All project decisions are based on a clear definition of the project scope, connecting the project value and the advantages that should be realized due to successful project implementation.
Project Scope Statement
The Project Scope Statement establishes the project scope and ensures that all project stakeholders are on the same page. A complete report should include project adaptation, a brief description of the project outcomes and planned benefits, a rapid assessment of the significant project difficulties, assumptions and dependency on other projects or external initiatives, and a definition of project success (Crawford, 2021). This document acts as a communication tool for all project stakeholders, ensuring that everyone knows what the projects are and aren’t and any authoritative changes made to the project.
Work Breakdown Structure
The next stage in further defining scope is to break it into smaller manageable portions once the Scope Statement has been established. The goal is to create a comprehensive inventory of the project’s activities, which will be used to develop resource requirements such as time, skills, and cost estimations (Nicholas & Steyn, 2020). It also provides a framework for measuring and monitoring project performance and promoting clear project task communication. The Project Work Breakdown Structure is a project that focuses on the project’s impact while also detailing its scope. It serves as the foundation for designing and managing a project plan, budget, and requests for revisions or deviations from the initial technique in project management (Alnaggar & Pitt, 2018). For technical purposes, WBS is designed in an inverted tree structure; it resembles an organizational chart and aids in visualizing the entire project and all of its major components.
The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a project management system that defines and organizes a project’s scope using a sequential tree structure. The first two levels of the WBS define a set of planned outcomes that span the entire scope of a complex endeavour (Nicholas & Steyn, 2020). In each of the successive novels, the offspring of the parent node represents 100% of the overall width of their parent’s node. A well-designed WBS defines anticipated consequences rather than scheduled tasks. The project’s anticipated outcomes are the results. They can be predicted accurately; nevertheless, the activities that make up the project plan are difficult to predict. With a well-designed WBS, any project function can be assigned to only one WBS site.
The project management Scope breakdown
A work breakdown structure (WBS) lists all project activities broken down into tasks or subtasks. This decomposition procedure gives you peace of mind when balancing the project’s overall plan and budget. It shows all the jobs that need to be finished (Antony & Gupta, 2018). Depending on the size and complexity of each project, the WBS may have a fourth level that explains the actions. The highest level contains the project’s final goal, the second level includes project objectives, the third level provides project activities, and the WBS may have a fourth level explaining the actions.
The project’s size and complexity will determine the number of standards required by the WBS. Additional measures may be established in some projects to indicate intermediate goals. Depending on the project that will serve or collect the communities’ objectives, some projects may choose to alter the WBS. WBS must be created with the assistance of a project team or employees who have worked on comparable projects in the past (Antony & Gupta, 2018). It uses data from the Project Implementation Phase and the donor RFP response component, notably the Logframe matrix, which describes the project’s objectives, outcomes, and tasks. The project will also need to identify all other project-related activities, such as project team training, participation in seminars, presentations, administrative responsibilities, project office planning, and project office purchase, such as computers and project information systems (Antony & Gupta, 2018). The WBS encompasses all of the work that a project will undertake, including activities that will consume human resources, time, and money.
The project manager will be able to describe project results to the project team clearly and concisely using WBS while also documenting the order and sequence of work required to achieve those results (Bergmann & Karwowski, 2018). WBS helps define project outcomes and identify specific parts of the project and the teams needed to complete each component. Furthermore, once completed, the WBS serves as a foundation and a point of reference for other aspects of the project plan (Fageha & Aibinu, 2013). Another feature of WBS is a numbering system that assigns a unique number to each element, which is helpful for project planning.
Scope planning
Scope planning is creating a comprehensive written statement that will serve as the foundation for future project decisions, including the decision-making process for determining if a project or phase has been completed effectively. Both projects and sub-projects must have a thorough written statement. An engineering firm hired to construct a petroleum processing facility, for example, must have detailed information defining the scope of its work on a modest project. The comprehensive report serves as the foundation for the agreement between the project team and the project customer by specifying project objectives and delivery. This process may entail more than just developing a visual document if all components of a comprehensive statement are already in place. A proposal request may indicate a significant deployment, and a project document outlines project objectives.
Project Scope Change Control Plan
The transformation management system describes submitting any modifications to the project’s scope and identifying the person responsible for authorizing the changes. The manager’s responsibility in assessing system and budget consequences is an essential aspect of a comprehensive management plan.
This program aims to minimize all projects’ natural scope to raise their scope without compensating for other project concerns. The following are some of the program’s components:
Form to seek a project change. This form is used to track any requests for project scope changes from project stakeholders, such as donors or recipients. The reasons for the change, the person who requested it, the date, and the difference are all recorded.
Analyze the change in scope. The analysis is carried out to determine the project’s impact on the change; in some cases, the difference may be a new activity rather than additional work that has no bearing on the program or budget, whilst in others, the addition of more work will increase project financing and program expansion. There should be no changes to the general statement or WBS until an analysis has been performed and obtained approval.
Approval of a modification in scope. The project will identify key stakeholders to approve any changes, including the Contributor for budget or program changes, the organization’s management for changes to the organization’s strategies, methods, or means of identifying the project, and beneficiaries for changes to initial agreements or expectations of project requirements. Before any work can begin, all differences must be approved.
Project scope statements and plans should be updated (Crawford, 2021). When the change is approved, the project must assess all relevant project plans, including the schedule, budget, scope statement, log frame, and work breakdown structure (WBS). If this information is not kept up to date, the project may miss the change or fail to take the necessary steps to execute it.
The contact’s scope changes. The project plan must consult with the project team and stakeholders after analyzing all programs and managing alterations and their effects on the project (Alnaggar & Pitt, 2018). The degree to which the change is communicated will be determined by its significance.
Assigning scope work
Once all of the work required to complete the project has been identified, the following stage in the scope management process is to transfer the work to the personnel in charge (Fageha & Aibinu, 2013). This step includes the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), a project plan that outlines when each work or task should be accomplished, and the Resource Requirements Matrix (RRM), the matrix we utilized to choose the project team. This stage includes tasks such as determining the scope of work for a project team using the Work Sharing Sheet and designating project coordinators (Pace, 2019). In addition to collecting information on completed activities, the program covers the acquisition and recruitment of beneficiaries in work.
Work Assignment Sheet
All work or activities in the WBS must be assigned to the person in charge of completing them. The project plan is followed, and the scope of work is determined based on the distinct cycles of the project phases (Pace, 2019). A project team member can be given a monthly or quarterly list of responsibilities to complete at that time, which could include data analysis, stakeholder meetings, training, or reporting. The project’s start date, projected completion date, beneficiaries, locations, and other resources required to finish the project should be listed on the spreadsheet. The assignment may be at a specified level or level of activity, depending on the team member’s talents and authority. Still, it should include a summary of the instructions or procedures used to complete the task (Alnaggar & Pitt, 2018). A technician, for example, would be entrusted with completing a task using gender-based approaches. In contrast, a wild worker might be responsible for gathering fundamental data from a specific population using comprehensive instructions and forms.
Conclusion and Future Work
Project managers and decision-makers must develop a well-defined project that represents the expectations of participants and maximizes the advantages of their efforts without jeopardizing the project’s goal. As a result, all stakeholders should have a fair chance to hear their voices so that no aspect of the project’s scope is overlooked. To avoid conflict, a complete project definition process is required that considers all participants’ perspectives and positions (Richardson & Jackson, 2018). Stakeholders’ suggestions should be considered in many elements of the project description following their concerns so that their involvement reflects their level of importance and project compliance.
As a starting point, this paper sets out a theoretical framework to integrate the practice of translating the whole project with participatory management using participatory theories. The process will help achieve a better project definition, including stakeholder feedback (Antony & Gupta, 2018). The perspectives of all participants are represented in the broader definition of the importance of their project to satisfy participants’ expectations and worries or, at the very least, to lower the degree to which one person becomes more or less committed (Nicholas & Steyn, 2020). The development of a tool that allows decision-makers in Saudi Arabia to examine the scope of project scope during the pre-project planning phase of construction projects is a significant contribution to the research. In addition to the role of practice, this study will contribute to theory. According to the literature, project definition and participation theory are two independent topics of study that are frequently addressed separately. However, this study will use process justice and a participatory approach to merge these two research areas.
References
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Bergmann, T., & Karwowski, W. (2018, July). Agile project management and project success: A literature review. In International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (pp. 405-414). Springer, Cham.
Crawford, J. K. (2021). Project management maturity model. Auerbach Publications.
Fageha, M. K., & Aibinu, A. A. (2013). Managing project scope definition to improve stakeholders’ participation and enhance project outcome. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 74, 154-164.
Heldman, K. (2018). PMP: project management professional exam study guide. John Wiley & Sons.
Nicholas, J. M., & Steyn, H. (2020). Project management for engineering, business, and technology. Routledge.
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Richardson, G. L., & Jackson, B. M. (2018). Project management theory and practice. Auerbach Publications.
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