Project Scope Statement: How to Write One With Examples

The scope of a challenge is the sum of all of the work that wants to be executed. A challenge scope assertion helps challenge managers outline the boundaries of what is going to and what received’t be achieved. But scope statements aren’t nearly work administration.

To write a challenge scope assertion, you’ll want to perceive the challenge objectives, work breakdown construction and necessities, amongst different issues. Then, when you’ve outlined your challenge scope, you may create a scope doc.

What Is a Project Scope Statement?

A scope assertion is a doc that defines all the weather of the challenge scope in addition to assumptions, challenge necessities and acceptance standards. Your challenge scope assertion will act as the first device for stakeholders and teammates to reference and use as a tenet to precisely measure challenge success.

A challenge scope assertion is a part of the scope administration plan, a bigger doc that comprises all of the methods, guidelines and procedures to handle your challenge scope. In the identical manner, the scope administration plan is a vital part of your challenge plan.

How to Write a Project Scope Statement

Now that we all know what a challenge scope assertion is, let’s learn the way to write this essential challenge administration doc. Similar to the 5 Ws of journalism—who, what, when, the place, why—to correctly define your challenge scope assertion, you will need to tackle these seven issues:

1. Project Goals & Objectives

Project objectives and aims are what outline the aim of a challenge. Project aims are the smaller steps that lead to the challenge objectives, that are broader. Start your challenge scope doc by explaining them. These objectives and aims must be documented in a challenge constitution, too.

2. Project Requirements

Project managers and stakeholders should attain an settlement concerning the challenge scope and different challenge necessities such because the anticipated high quality, threat, advantages and value, amongst others.

3. Project Scope Description

It would possibly sound simple sufficient, however that is a very powerful step. Here is the place you’ll outline your challenge scope, which is all of the work that wants to be achieved to full the challenge. Here are some easy steps to make it easier to outline the challenge scope.

• Use a piece breakdown construction to visualize all of your challenge duties, deliverables, and milestones.
• List out what’s throughout the scope of your challenge, and what’s out of scope. Everything that’s not included within the challenge scope is named challenge exclusions.
• Identify challenge constraints, that are all the constraints akin to time or value.
• Create a scope baseline to evaluate your precise progress to the deliberate challenge scope.

Project exclusions and constraints are essential as a result of they assist set up boundaries for the challenge to exist. They additionally handle your stakeholders’ expectations/enter and provides your workforce members some inventive limitations to work inside.

4. Project Exclusions

While it’s crucial that you just outline the boundaries round what the challenge consists of from the outset, it’s additionally extraordinarily essential that you just checklist out what this challenge doesn’t embody. For instance:

• Application updates which might be deliberate for a later challenge and are deliberately not included on this challenge
• Restricted or rescheduled buyer entry to sure help traces/product options

5. Project Constraints

Project constraints are what make managing initiatives such a puzzle to resolve. The prime three constraints to managing any challenge are usually time, cash and scope, often called the triple constraint of challenge administration. They are interconnected, that means that in case you pull one lever on ‘scope’, one other lever on ‘money’ or ‘time’ will even transfer.

But there are extra challenge constraints that may crop up at any time, together with threat, sources, group, technique, prospects and extra. List all of the constraints you foresee in your challenge, so you may strive to have options in place prepared to launch when wanted.

6. Project Assumptions

Your challenge assumptions usually revolve across the very issues that find yourself being constraints, together with time, cash and scope. For instance, it’s on this part of your challenge scope doc, “the front-end development team will be available during this project time period,” or, “the customer support team will receive new product training by x time.” It’s essential to checklist these out as this received’t solely inform key stakeholders what your main useful resource wants are to make the challenge go, but it surely additionally offers you quick perception as to the place your greatest threat elements lie.

7. Project Deliverables

List out the deliverables your workforce members want to produce so as to meet enterprise aims. This can embody the product itself, instruction and set up manuals, advertising and marketing supplies, press releases, promoting campaigns and extra.

Your challenge scope assertion define will assist act as a marker as you construct out your full scope assertion. Because whereas predicting the way forward for the challenge is unimaginable at such a excessive degree, this is step one to getting your challenge as shut to the result as potential. By beginning with the seven key statements above, you will get a head begin on a profitable challenge.

Gantt charts are the workhorses of scope administration. However, most Gantt software program is woefully restricted by way of its performance. ProjectSupervisor has dynamic on-line Gantt charts that do the common organizing, prioritizing and linking dependencies and including milestones. But in contrast to different instruments, you may filter for the important path. When you set the baseline, you’re ready to evaluate your precise progress to what you had deliberate. There’s no higher manner to monitor challenge scope.

Project Scope Statement Template

Our free challenge scope template is the right device to create a scope assertion on your initiatives. Simply fill out the fields that we simply reviewed above and begin managing work.

Project Scope Statement Sample

To higher perceive what the challenge scope assertion is we thought it will be useful to visualize it utilizing our free challenge scope template for Word as a challenge scope assertion instance. As you may see, it has the fundamental challenge scoping data on prime after which goes right into a common justification for the challenge’s want and the way it will fulfill that.

Then we get into the primary a part of the challenge scope assertion, akin to what might be in scope and out of scope for the challenge. This creates boundaries for the challenge and makes clear what is important and should be prioritized.

Now we get into explanations of the enterprise aims, akin to targets that the challenge wants to hit so as to achieve success, and the deliverables that might be produced over the life cycle of the challenge.

From there, you’ll describe challenge exclusions, problems with time, value, scope, threat, sources and so forth that would constrain it and no matter is assumed to be achieved within the challenge.

Finally, you’ll go into prices. The challenge scope assertion goes to estimate the prices and checklist all of them, together with the estimated value, the precise value and the associated fee on completion of the challenge. Then you may present the variance, which is the distinction between the estimated value and the precise value.

Project Scope Statement Examples

Now let’s evaluation two easy challenge scope assertion examples to higher perceive how a scope assertion can be utilized in numerous industries.

Construction Project Scope Statement Example

Defining the scope of a challenge is likely one of the most essential steps within the challenge planning course of. In building, defining the scope helps building challenge homeowners, contractors and subcontractors not solely attain an settlement of what the development challenge will appear like, but in addition create an correct challenge value estimate primarily based on the work, supplies, gear and labor that might be required.

1. Project Goals & Objectives: Build a residential building challenge, an condominium advanced that can generate income for the development agency.
2. Project Requirements: Architects, engineers and building challenge managers will work on the development design to decide what are the specs and necessities for the challenge. These embody high quality requirements for building supplies, security necessities, amongst different issues. To have a transparent understanding of what these challenge necessities will appear like, they’ll want to create a set of building drawings and building paperwork akin to blueprints, invoice of portions and pc assisted designs.
3. Project Scope Description: Once there’s a design for the constructing, the challenge scope may be outlined through the use of a piece breakdown construction that can enable the development administration workforce to zoom into the sorts of duties that can want to be executed, akin to masonry, plumbing, electrical and different sorts of building actions.
4. Project Exclusions: One of a very powerful issues when writing a scope assertion is to state what actions is not going to be executed, often called challenge exclusions. Clearly explaining it will assist keep away from misunderstandings down the highway.
5. Project Constraints: In challenge administration there are three conventional challenge constraints, time, scope and value. However there are much more challenge constraints that may have an effect on a building challenge, akin to sources, high quality and threat. For any building challenge there might be constraints that want to be factored in in the course of the challenge planning part akin to environmental considerations, native rules and constructing codes.
6. Project Assumptions: In any challenge there are assumptions that material specialists will draw earlier than the development part begins. These are often issues which might be past the management of the development administration workforce, akin to climate situations, availability of suppliers and the power of the workforce to full work on the deliberate time-frame. These assumptions might be confirmed true or false, as soon as the precise work begins.
7. Project Deliverables: As beforehand acknowledged, the development challenge will contain various kinds of works akin to HVAC, electrical work, wooden work, masonry, amongst different issues. Each of those building crews or subcontractors might be liable for producing many challenge deliverables all through the development part.

Manufacturing Project Scope Statement Example

Manufacturing initiatives typically contain the manufacturing of bodily merchandise. This takes a collection of steps wanted to rework uncooked supplies into completed items. Here’s a easy scope assertion instance for manufacturing.

1. Project Goals & Objectives: Create a completed product primarily based on market analysis and the strategic planning of the corporate.
2. Project Requirements: There might be inside and exterior necessities for the event and manufacturing of your product. In phrases of inside necessities, it’s best to take into consideration the considerations of your organization stakeholders who will need low manufacturing prices, excessive revenue margins and the shortest time potential to get a return on their funding. In phrases of exterior necessities, it’s best to contemplate the elements of competitors in your market and the preferences of your goal prospects akin to the standard, worth and options they anticipate out of your product.
3. Project Scope Description: The challenge scope on this case will summarize all of the totally different actions which might be a part of the manufacturing cycle. This consists of the product improvement course of, the procurement and transportation of uncooked supplies, elements and parts from suppliers to the manufacturing line, the assembling course of, high quality management procedures and the distribution channels that might be utilized to deliver the product to the market.
4. Project Exclusions: It’s essential to clarify to your stakeholders precisely what options might be included in your product in addition to the standard requirements that might be adopted. Product documentation akin to invoice of supplies are perfect to outline what your challenge exclusions are.
5. Project Constraints: There might be challenge constraints particular to manufacturing akin to restricted manufacturing capability, useful resource availability, buyer demand and equipment upkeep.
6. Project Assumptions: Brainstorm with totally different departments concerned with the product, akin to advertising and marketing, gross sales, manufacturing and upkeep to draft as many challenge assumptions as you will get. The extra cross-functional insights you will get, the higher. It’s essential to be prepared to face a number of eventualities. A great way to accomplish that is to use linear programming fashions to simulate totally different ranges of manufacturing and buyer demand.
7. Project Deliverables: The deliverables might be all of the totally different product improvement paperwork that can information the manufacturing course of, the product prototype and at last the ultimate model of the product that might be launched to the market.

Project Scope Statement vs. Scope of Work

There are some things that challenge scope statements usually get confused with, together with your scope of labor. They could sound like comparable challenge scoping paperwork, however listed below are the first variations between these two. however listed below are the first variations between these two.

Your scope of labor is an settlement of labor, usually between advisor and consumer, that particulars the settlement of labor to be carried out, together with, however not restricted to:

• Deliverables/merchandise/outcomes
• Project timeline
• Project milestones
• Reports to catalog challenge progress

While your scope of labor may be time-consuming to write, it outlines the challenge itself and never essentially the plan that’s to observe. The challenge scope assertion, in flip, fulfills that function by detailing and mapping out precisely what to anticipate with the challenge plan and the challenge itself.

Scope Statement vs. Scope Management Plan

They would possibly sound comparable, and the result of the challenge could also be comparable, however a challenge scope assertion is totally different out of your challenge scope administration plan. A challenge scope administration plan is what follows the challenge scope assertion, detailing the scope administration course of from the beginning to the end of your challenge life cycle.

Additionally, it helps outline the work that should be achieved over the course of the challenge, and it controls and displays these processes. It additionally paperwork and tracks phases to keep away from scope creep, and assists with challenge closing, together with an audit of deliverables and assessing the challenge end result for fulfillment elements.

Your scope assertion isn’t almost as concerned—it’s simply the umbrella over your challenge scope administration plan, performing as a rubric for stakeholders and workforce members to observe.

Best Practices for a Successful Project Scope Statement

Here are the most effective practices to contemplate as you write your challenge scope assertion:

• Avoid utilizing jargon-heavy language. You’ll be speaking to a number of individuals throughout a number of departments and specializations, so preserve the language constant and clear.
• Keep it brief. Since it is a challenge doc that’s searching for stakeholder buy-in, there’ll seemingly be loads of modifying to be achieved earlier than it’s finalized, and it’ll want to be a fast reference information for later. So, preserve it easy and save the verbiage on your full challenge plan.
• Stay away from sweeping statements. You don’t need to over-commit your sources on the challenge earlier than it even kicks off.
• Make positive it solutions questions, like:
  • What are the long-term enterprise advantages?
  • What does it present our prospects that don’t exist already?
  • Is this higher than what we at the moment provide available on the market?

ProjectSupervisor & Project Scope Management

Major challenge rollouts may be demanding on each your time and power. Don’t let it overwhelm you earlier than kick-off. For starters, you should use our Gantt chart software program to create a WBS and get a visible on deliverables, in addition to the duties wanted to full earlier than submitting your challenge scope assertion.

From there, you may strive ProjectSupervisor and use our job administration options to get all the required duties organized, prioritized and sorted by challenge part. You may even ask different individuals for enter: workforce members can remark instantly on the duties so communication stays organized and to the purpose.

Keep tabs in your sources, duties and deliverables and extra so you may preserve your challenge on observe. With ProjectSupervisor, you may follow mapping out your challenge timeline through the use of our Gantt chart, itemizing out deliverables utilizing our job checklist or kanban device and alluring workforce members to evaluation the timeline earlier than submitting the scope assertion to key stakeholders. Start your free 30-day trial at the moment.