Do You Know Where Your Scope Is?

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Do You Know Where Your Scope Is?
William Duncan (October 1, 2009)

Everyone seems to agree on the importance of scope, but there is much less agreement on what it is and where to find it. By focusing on a project’s “product” (whether tangible or intangible), project managers create greater clarity around the implication of all changes.

What could be more basic to the practice of project management than an understanding of scope? Scope determines the project’s boundaries: what’s in, what’s out. Everyone seems to understand that a scope change will usually affect both cost and schedule. When a project fails, in whole or in part, poorly defined or poorly understood scope is almost always identified as a key contributor.

But while everyone seems to agree on the importance of scope, there is substantially less agreement on what it is and still less on where to find it.

What is scope?

In searching both the web and the printed project management literature, I found three schools of thought:

School #1 says that scope is defined by the description of the product of the project.

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September 2010:

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