Chapter5 Question 5

Chapter5 Question 5
Read one of the suggested readings or find an article related to project scope management . Write one page summary of the article, its key conclusions, and your opinion.

This is an article by Tom Mochal publised in 16th Nov 2004
Title: “Poor scope-management practices could precipitate project failure”
URL:http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5034542.html
This is an article that describes how important is to invoke a scope in the project. Article also conveys the massage that project management does not begin and end with defining project and planning a project.
The article says this way; Most of the projects fail due to poor planning. Defining and planning a project is the only first phase of the project. After the planning is done, it is needed to be worked out properly so as to finish the given work within the time frame. But sometimes there are some problems rose which is almost inevitable part of the project like the user or the stakeholders wants to add something more or modify within the project. This is where the scope management comes into action, instead if the project team will try to fulfill all the new modification every time then it will have effect not only in the project completion date but also in the budget and loads of trouble.
Therefore scope is the area that helps to get rid of such problems, thus scope management comers into action. It starts with scope definition. The better is the scope defined the more successful is the project. The main purpose of defining the scope is to get the clear picture of what to be done and the boundaries in which the project should run. Different aspects of the scope like type of deliverables, life cycle process, type of data, data source, organizational scope, stakeholders, major functionalities like decisions, reporting etc can help in the successful completion of the project.
It is obvious with the project that the user asks for some changes in the processes. In this competitive and fast changing world & business the change is very fast so the stakeholder may ask for some changes when the project is on the way. There request should be taken into consideration because is the change is not given the importance then the deliverable will be of less value to the users and the stakeholder or may be useless. Therefore there should be always a process in each project that is there to maintain the changes in the project scope by the sponsors. If the sponsor ask for the change the project manager needs to evaluate the changing activities, its impact on the business, project, and then inform the sponsor about that evaluation. Sponsor will definitely understand the need of additional budget and time needed it include those changes in the project and allocate it as per required.
While managing the scope there are some problems encountered:
Scope creep when there are lots of small changes embedded in the project, that has taken too much time and budget. Thus no longer can make budget and must delay commitments.
Different people like users, stakeholders, client mangers may ask for change. But every change asked by them should not be done without the permission of the sponsor. Because the sponsor may not agree for some changes and changing those things in the project may be a mistake.
The project team accountability occurs when the changes are to be made on the project. If the project team without consulting to the team manger or other group members just starts changing what they found out by interaction with the client will cause their activities to be completed late and affect the whole project.
In the process of project if the project was found to be out of control in the terms of budget and schedule always try to find out the main reason behind it. If possible then the project scope change should be done before the project processes.
So after going through the article I think that the project scope management is a crucial state of the project that can be changed from time to time according to the need of business. Thus to cope up with the fast changing environment and to make the project more useful to the stakeholders it is necessary to accept changes. Accepting the changes does not mean that whatever the users, stakeholders or other those related to the project say go on changing all those, but analyze the change, evaluate it and then give the result of the evaluation to the authorized person. If the sponsor is ready for the change then go for change asking some additional budget and time if necessary. And their must be good accountability between team members thus the changes are known by all the team and can put team effort to complete the project in right committed time and with all the functions needed for stakeholders and users.