Overview

There likely is no factor that would contribute more to the success of any project than having a good and complete definition of the project's scope of work.

Quentin Fleming and Joel Koppelman
Earned Value Project Management

In the normal course of project events, business leaders develop the need for a project after recognizing opportunity that can be transformed into business value. Such a project is defined on the business side of the project balance sheet. Although the business and the project team may have differences about resources and schedule, the common conveyance of ideas across the project balance sheet is scope. Understand the scope clearly and the project management team should be able to then estimate required resources, schedule, and quality. Defining scope and estimating the work are inextricably tightly coupled.

The Department of Defense, certainly a proponent of rigorous project management, sees the benefit of having a structured approach to organizing the project scope when it says that such a structure: ^[1]

• "Separates (an)...item into its component parts, making the relationships of the parts clear and the relationship of the tasks to be completed to each other and to the end product clear.

• Significantly affects planning and the assignment of management and technical responsibilities.

• Assists in tracking the status of...(project) efforts, resource allocations, cost estimates, expenditures, and cost and technical performance."

• Helps ensure that contractors are not unnecessarily constrained in meeting item requirements.