The scope is the key area to define in a project since it is the basis for its development, regardless of the defined project strategy. It applies to the project output based on a product, service or result.
While today there is a general tendency to integrate the different strategies according to the project context, regardless of the existing trend the focus should always be on the scope. If the scope is inaccurate, the project will be negatively impacted irrespective of how effectively the rest of the areas are managed.
In addition, to adequately define the project scope, the project team should:
- Understand the business needs: Understanding the business objective to be achieved through the project and defining its scope based on such objective.
- Identify all stakeholders and requirements: Identifying the stakeholder that started the project and continue to identify the rest of the stakeholders in order to define and agree on every requirement that makes up the project scope. The scope must be aligned to the business objective and be separate from the technique used to understand it: user stories, use cases, etc.
- Integrate the scope: Integrating each requirement understood and agreed upon, grouping them by deliverables, in order to obtain the requested product, service or result.
All projects must first understand the business needs and identify all stakeholders in order to understand what should be done; this will facilitate the final integration of the scope that leads to the delivery of the requested output.
Once the scope is understood and agreed upon, the project team will be able to achieve an adequate definition of the strategy, manage the stakeholders’ expectations more effectively, and above all, deliver the product, service or result according to the requested functionalities.