Project Management How To Deal with Scope
One of the major challenges with project management, how to deal with scope of
the project haunts all the project managers. Even experienced project mangers find it
difficult to deal with this issue. One of the problems that we face with
project management is scope creep. All of us try to avoid scope creep but it is rather difficult area to deal with.
Though we say that the requirements are frozen once the price and timeline are agreed upon,
in reality, it is very difficult to freeze the requirements because all the service providers are
trying to satisfy their customers and when their customer tells them that the application that we are
developing for them will be rendered useless unless a new feature is added. Adding a new feature cannot be
done without affecting the entire scope of the project. We cannot just append the additional module. We will
have to make necessary changes to the modules that are already developed to seamlessly integrate the new
feature requested by the customer. This puts the service provider in a very tricky situation because the
entire project timeline and cost have to be recalculated and this will also affect project management.
Though this is a massive problem, almost 90% of the project suffers from project scope creep. So this major
challenge with project management, how to deal with scope of the project is still an unanswered question.
The applications that we develop or the online systems that we develop for our customers are to meet their
specific needs. They hire custom project development services because they have very specific requirements.
So if we do not meet their specific requirements 100%, our services are useless for them. If they cannot get
exactly what they want, they might as well go with off-the-shelf software. When we reason out along these lines,
our project scope should allow room for specifications change and we should include clauses that will provide a
certain amount of tolerance to project scope creep. In case in our project management, how to deal with scope
related issues are not addressed in the beginning of the project we will end up in unnecessary trouble. Many
companies have met with loss because they want to save their reputation. As a result, they allow change of project specifications
that hurt them financially. In software projects time is money, the longer time you spend on a project the more money you lose.
So in your project management, how to deal with scope should be discussed in advance before you begin the work. You should be
able to come up with a system whereby you satisfy your customer at the same time draw up clear boundaries as to what can be
accommodated and what cannot be accommodated. When your Service Level Agreement addresses all these issues in advance, you
will be free from all unnecessary project scope related problems. However, despite having a clear SLA, you can still walk into problems.
So you are cannot make yourself 100% immune to such issues.
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