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Chapter 5: Managing the Project Scope
H
ave you ever set out to clean your garage and ended up cleaning your attic? It usuallystarts by needing to move the car out of the garage so you can really dig in and clean.As you move your car, you realize the car could really use a cleaning, too.
So you clean out the car. You dust it down, clean the windows inside and out,and vacuum out pennies, old pens, and some green French fries. The vacuum,you discover, has something caught in the hose, so you have to fight to clear theblockage in order to finish cleaning out the car. Once the inside’s spick and span,you think, “Might as well wash and wax the car, too.”This calls for the garden hose. The garden hose, you notice, is leaking water atthe spigot by the house. Now you’ve got to replace the connector. This calls for apair of channel-lock pliers. You run to the hardware store, get the pliers—and somenew car wax. After fixing the garden hose, you finally wash and wax the car.As you’re putting the second coat of wax on, you see a few scratches on the car thatcould use some buffing. You have a great electric buffer, but can’t recall where it is.Maybe it’s in the attic? You check the attic only to realize how messy things are there,too. So you begin moving out old boxes of clothes, baby toys, and more interesting stuff.Before you know it, the garage is full of boxes you’ve brought down from the attic.The attic is somewhat cleaner, but the garage is messier than when you started wayback this morning. As you admire the mess, you realize it’s starting to rain on yourfreshly waxed car, the garden hose is tangled across the lawn, and there are so manyboxes in the garage you can’t pull the car in out of the rain.So what does this have to do with project management? Plenty! Projectmanagement requires focus, organization, and a laser-like concentration. In thischapter, we’ll be covering project scope management: the ability to get the requiredwork done—and only the required work—to complete the project. We’ll look at howa project manager should create and follow a plan to complete the required work tosatisfy the scope without wandering or embellishing on the project deliverables.
CERTIFICATION OBJECTIVE 5.01
Defining Project Scope Management
Project scope management, according to the PMBOK, constitutes “the processes toensure that the project includes all of the work required, and only the work required,to complete the project successfully.” Project scope management has several purposes:
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