After the project has been defined and the project team has been appointed, you are

ready to enter the

second phase in the project management life cycle: the detailed project planning phase. Project planning
is at the heart of the project life cycle, and tells everyone involved where you’re going and how you’re
going to get there. The planning phase is when the project plans are documented, the project deliverables
and requirements are defined, and the project schedule is created. It involves creating a set of plans to
help guide your team through the implementation and closure phases of the project. The plans created
during this phase will help you manage time, cost, quality, changes, risk, and related issues. They will also
help you control staff and external suppliers to ensure that you deliver the project on time, within budget,
and within schedule. The project planning phase is often the most challenging phase for a project
manager, as you need to make an educated guess about the staff, resources, and equipment needed to
complete your project. You may also need to plan your communications and procurement activities, as
well as contract any third-party suppliers.

After successful completion of this module, you should be able to:

 Understand the different scope management processes

 Differentiate a product scope from a project scope
 Determine the elements of a Project Scope Statement
 Prepare a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) through decomposition

Monitoring
Initiation Planning Execution and Closing
Controlling

Elements of Project Planning

Project planning means the following three things:
 Refining the project objectives defined during project initiation and collecting
requirements based on the stakeholder needs and expectations.
 Determining the scope of the project.
  Determining the course of action required to attain these objectives, which involves
breaking down the scope and objectives into concrete, manageable tasks.
Figure 5.1 presents the big picture of project planning and its relationship with executing. This figure and
other figures like this only present a high-level view. The details may be more complex.

Figure 5.1 Interactions and data flow between different components of project planning

Planning the Scope

There are two types of scopes: the project and product scope. The project scope is all of the work that
needs to be done to make the product. The product scope means the features and functions of the product
or service that you and your team are building. The scope—i.e. product scope and project scope—refers
to both what is included in the project and what is not.

EXAMPLE 5.1 PRODUCT AND PROJECT SCOPE

Among the following attributes, identify which are part of product scope and which are part of the
project scope:
A. Develop software modules to support website.
B. The user can only access this website after logging in.
C. The drug should not have more than two side effects.
D. The drug must be developed within one year.
E. The drug must be tested in-house before it goes to Food and Drug Administration.
 Answers: Product Scope – B, C; Project Scope – A, D, E
In other words, scoping a project means drawing boundaries around it. The major goal of scope
management is to ensure that the required work and only the required work is included and performed
in the project. This goal is accomplished by the following processes of scope management:

 Plan Scope Management. This process is performed to develop a document called the
scope management plan, which contains information on how to define, control, and
validate the scope; i.e., the project and product scope.
 Collect Requirements. This is the process performed to collect, determine, and document
the project and product requirements and plan to manage those requirements.
 Define Scope. This process is performed to develop a detailed description of the project
and the product in the sense of what is included and what is not.
 Create Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). This process is used to develop the work
breakdown structure in which deliverables, and hence work to produce them, are broken
down into smaller manageable tasks that can be assigned to team members. This is done
starting with the scope.
 Validate Scope. This is the process used to formalize the acceptance of the completed and
already verified project deliverables.
 Control Scope. Used to monitor the status of the scope—i.e., project scope and product
scope—and to manage changes to the scope baseline.
The following table summarizes the major outputs of the scope management process:

Scope Management Processes Process Group Major Outputs

1. Plan Scope Management Planning Scope management plan,
requirement management plan
2. Collect Requirements Planning Requirement documentation,
requirement traceability
matrices
3. Define Scope Planning Project scope statement
4. Create WBS Planning Scope baseline
5. Control Scope Monitoring & Work performance
Controlling information
6. Validate Scope Monitoring & Accepted deliverables, work
Controlling performance information
change requests
Table 5.1 Processes of Scope Management Mapped to the Process Groups

All of these processes are equally important when managing projects in real life. However, for the purpose
of this subject, we are only going to tackle the define scope and create WBS processes. But make sure you
are still familiar with the purpose and outputs of the other processes.
Project Scope Statement
The purpose of the Define Scope process is to figure out the detailed descriptions of the project and its
product. The major output of this process is the project scope statement. This document should include
both the product and the project scope. It basically describes what needs to be accomplished by the
project: the product and work required to generate the product. The specific elements that may be
included in the project scope statement are discussed in the following list:

 Product Requirement. Product requirement is defined as the description of features,

functions, and other characteristics of a project product.
 Product Acceptance Criteria. This defines the process, criteria, and conditions for
accepting the completed products that the project will deliver.
 Project Assumptions and Constraints. As mentioned in the previous module, an
assumption is a factor that you consider to be true without any proof or verification while
a constraint is a restriction (or a limitation) that can affect the performance of the project.
As the project manager, you should document the specific assumptions related to the
project scope and also analyze their impact in case they turn out to be false. Similarly, the
constraints related to the project scope must also be documented in the scope statement.
The constraints can come from various sources, such as a predetermined deadline (also
called a hard deadline) for the completion of the project or a milestone, limits on the funds
available for the project, and contractual provisions.
 Project Deliverables. A deliverable is a unique and verifiable project outcome, such as a
product, a capability to provide a service, or a result.
 Project Exclusions. This involves drawing boundaries around the project by specifying
what is included and what is not, especially focusing on the gray areas where the
stakeholders may make their own assumptions, different from each other. It generally
identifies what is excluded from the project, which helps to manage stakeholder
expectations.

EXAMPLE 5.2 PROJECT SCOPE STATEMENT ELEMENTS

ATech Company is currently engaged in a project to develop a software that will facilitate distance
learning. In the following table, the elements of the project scope statement are presented on the first
column in random order. Match each item in the first column with the appropriate item in the second
column.

1. The software product must run on both Microsoft Windows and A. Product requirement
Apple Macintosh. B. Acceptance criteria
2. A software to facilitate distance learning. C. Project assumptions
3. The software must be developed within 6 months. D. Project constraints
4. The software module must not have more than 10 bugs. E. Project deliverables
5. The software would not include video conferencing function. F. Project exclusions
6. The software would be developed by the same team throughout
the project.
Answers: 1-A; 2-E; 3-D; 4-B; 5-F; 6-C
Creating a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
To be able to actually execute the project, the project scope is broken down into manageable tasks,
thereby creating a work breakdown structure (WBS). The Create WBS process is the most important
process in the Scope Management knowledge area because it’s where you actually figure out all the work
you’re going to do. The main technique used to create the WBS is called decomposition.

Decomposition
Decomposition is a technique for subdividing the project deliverables into smaller, manageable tasks
called work packages. In decomposition, the lines are called branches and the boxes are called nodes or
packages. An example of a WBS is presented on Figure 5.2.

Distance Learning The decomposition process is done by executing the

Software following steps:

1) Identify the deliverables of the project. Using the

data from example 5.2, we have identified the
1. Project 2. Software
Management Development distance learning software as the project’s
deliverable.
2) Identify the project phases needed to achieve the
1.1 Prepare project
2.1 Programming deliverable. These are the project management phase
charter and software development phase.
3) Decompose the phases further into more detailed
1.2 Develop steps or specific tasks.
2.2 Interface
project
management plan
Designing 4) Keep decomposing to lower levels until necessary
and sufficient decomposition has been achieved.
5) Assign identification codes to the WBS
2.3 Software components. The lowest levels in the WBS are called
testing
work packages.
Figure 5.2 WBS Example

As the work is decomposed to lower levels of detail, work components become more concrete and
manageable. However, you should avoid excessive decomposition because it will lead to a large number
of work packages, and it will not be possible to manage all of them effectively. In other words, excessive
decomposition leads to inefficient use of management and other resources. Necessary and sufficient
decomposition is the key.

The Scope Baseline

The main output of the Create WBS process is the scope baseline. The inputs used to produce this
document are the project scope statement, the WBS, and the WBS dictionary. The WBS Dictionary is a
supporting document for the main WBS document to provide details about the components of the WBS.
The details about a component might include elements such as a code of account identifier, description
of work involved, quality requirements, acceptance criteria, list of milestones, schedule, cost estimates,
required resources, contract information (if any), and the organization or group responsible for this
component.