Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Scope Exchange Approach to Managing the Project Scope

Over the past few months I presented workshops on project change management. I made note of this workshop here and here. In this workshop I discuss strategies for dealing with change in the project environment. One of the types of change we encounter is change to the project scope. These changes may be significant changes or smaller changes realized through scope creep or feature creep.

Today, I read an article in PMNework discussing the value proposition of our projects. The author pointed out that, as project managers, we must understand how the deliverables within the scope of the project enable the organization to realize value. Similar to what I explain in my workshops, the author argued that the project scope at the end of the project rarely resembles the scope at the beginning of the project; change happens and a new or revised scope is adopted.

While changes to project scope is nothing new, what I found interesting is the author's take on the other side of scope change. We typically view scope change as adding new requirements or deliverables to the project and this change typically results in increased budget and schedule. However, we also need to look at the value of the previous scope to see if any of the previous scope no longer offers value to the organization. We shouldn't always simply add to the project scope but, perhaps look to exchange project scope so that we can maintain our baseline budget and schedule.

If we truly understand the value offered by our project we can better help our stakeholders evaluate new scope as it is introduced as well as the existing scope. Using the scope exchange approach we can better assess the project to remove or replace scope rather than always adding to the scope. We are still able to offer flexibility to our stakeholders by accommodating change but we better absorb this change if we look at opportunities to reduce or remove scope in other areas of the project.

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