What is Project Scope Management

Project Scope Management includes the activities necessary to make sure that any particular project contains all and only required work to complete the project by achieving its objectives. This is a major knowledge area which is thoroughly followed, tracked and reviewed by the project team continuously since scope is considered one of the critical factors that the success of failure of a project relies on.

There are 6 major processes identified by PMBOK 5th Edition under project scope management knowledge area. They are as follows;

Plan Scope Management

This is the process of developing a plan on how the project activities / work / scope will be defined, validated, controlled and managed. Throughout the entire project, this plan guides the project management team on how to manage the scope of the project. This is a subsidiary plan of the Project Integration Management plan.

Collect Requirements

This process includes the activities to define, determine, manage and document the stakeholders’ needs and requirements to achieve the project objectives. This process segment consists of both the project scope as well as the product scope.

Define Scope

This includes the activities to develop a detailed description of the project and product. It’s important to execute this process carefully since it involves in declining the project boundaries of the project by defining which of the collected requirements will be included and excluded from the agreed project scope.

Create Work Breakdown Structure

This is another important activity defined under project scope management knowledge area. It subdivides the project work and deliverables into smaller, manageable components. The main objective of this process it to provide a more clear, structured vision of what needs to be done and delivered. This is also recognized as a ‘Team Building’ activity and it requires every team member to participate and define the work.

Validate Scope

Validate Scope functions on formalizing the process of accepting the completed project deliverables. It supports the project team to increase the probability of accepting the final product, service or the result by validating each deliverable.

Control Scope

This is the final process stated under project scope management. It monitors the status of the project and product scope handle the changes to the scope baseline. Controlling the project scope ensures that every change request and recommended corrective or preventive action to be undergone via the ‘Perform Integrated Change Control’ process. This is a mandatory process since changes to the project are inevitable and unavoidable, hence there should be some kind of a controlling mechanism to maintain the project scope without unnecessary deviations.

Below table shows under which Project Management Process Group the above processes are performed.

**Please note that each and every individual process mentioned above will be explained further separately.