Scope Management Cheat Sheet

Scope Management — Quick Reference

Product Scope vs. Project Scope

• Product scope — Features and functions of the product (measured against requirements)
• Project scope — Work required to deliver the product (measured against the project management plan)

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

• Hierarchical decomposition of the total scope
• Lowest level = work package
• 100% Rule: WBS must include 100% of the work defined by the scope
• WBS Dictionary: describes each element (description, milestones, costs, resources)
• The WBS is scope — if it's not in the WBS, it's not in the project

Scope Creep vs. Gold Plating

	Scope Creep	Gold Plating
What	Uncontrolled scope additions	Extra features beyond scope
Who	Stakeholders/customers	Project team
Approved?	Not through change control	Not requested
Both are bad	Neither should happen — use change control

Validate Scope vs. Control Quality

	Validate Scope	Control Quality
Focus	Customer acceptance	Correctness of deliverables
Who	Customer/sponsor	QA/QC team
Output	Accepted deliverables	Verified deliverables
When	After Control Quality	Before Validate Scope

Requirements Collection Techniques

• Interviews — One-on-one, detailed requirements gathering
• Focus Groups — Group discussion with pre-qualified stakeholders
• Workshops — Cross-functional group sessions for alignment
• Questionnaires/Surveys — Large audience, statistical analysis
• Brainstorming — Generate ideas without judgment
• Prototyping — Build models to clarify requirements
• Observation — "Job shadowing" to understand actual work