Scope Management and Risk

I would like to thank all of those that attended last night’s experiment with PMChats a live broadcast that will be turned into a podcast.   The topic was scope management and risk, and a brief look at the many areas in scope that can later come back to haunt, or as I like to say, provide a learning opportunity.

A brief Taxonomy Scope Management and Risk

A brief list of the risk of things that can go wrong with scope is provided below:

• unclear scope
• poor scope control
• no configuration or change management
• insufficient time in planning scope
• too much time spent arguing over the scope
• sponsors and stakeholder role and involvement unclear
• unresolved conflicting perspectives about the scope and no escalation plans
• inappropriate selection of strategy taken to achieve the scope
• poor requirements elicitation
• poor requirements management
• office politics
• lack of trade-off consideration
• poor match of scope to available time and resources for the project
• rush to produce the final product ( all requirements up front)
• lack of prioritization of scope contents
• no confirmation scope has been achieved (verification) until the close of project
• insufficient team or SME involvement in evoking / understanding the scope
• unchecked or vetted assumptions

To Help

To help mitigate these risks we:

• ask questions (sponsors, stakeholders, and assumptions)
• prioritize scope (what is known)
• accept and manage change

Of course this is but a short list, we are working on expanding creating taxonomy of risk for the various project management knowledge areas.  We are going to add that to our risk management course we are presently developing.