How to Scope your project, and why?

Why scope?

• To define an outcome, and to define a problem.
• To give clients certain on what they’re getting: price, quality and timeline.
• To sell yourself as capable to do the job.
• To fix resources. Everything costs time, money and skill. You will need to allocate resources to get the outcome.

Scope must be white listed in.

• If you don’t white list something IN, then new items will CREEP in. This is called “scope creep”. If this happens, and you are being constrained by resources, this means you haven’t accounted for it in the above step(s). Perhaps the entire job needs to be de-scoped.

• Without a scope, you are handing over a blank cheque. DON”T DO THIS. Clients want people to make a good margin.
• White-listing also forces everyone to be clear on what they want.

Clear Unambiguous Objective:

• If you can’t quantify it, then you have a problem.
• Scoping will help the client to be satisfied, which is the ultimate objective.

Summary:

• Scoping allows you to make resourcing decisions to meet an outcome.
• Gives you happy clients.