As evident from the title itself, it’s a process that tracks the actual project performance with the planned project management activities. Manage, and Control process is a control function that takes place at all stages of the project – from Initiation through Closing. The key benefit of this process is that it allows the Stakeholders to understand the current state of the project, the steps taken, and budget, schedule, and scope forecasts.

Through the process of Monitor and Control, the project manager must be in a position to balance the requirements that arise from different knowledge areas. For example, the project manager can undergo situations, where a project is completed on-time, but, it has failed to meet the quality standards mentioned in the project management plan. Likewise, the project might have a significant scope, but unfortunately, it has exceeded the time and cost limit. Hence, the process of monitoring and controlling project work is considered extremely important.

Let’s discuss the inputs, tools and techniques and outputs involved in the monitor and control project work process –

Inputs

1. Project Management Plan

   The subsidiary plans and the project baselines form the basis of controlling the project, as it mainly involves focusing on all the aspects of the project. The PMP includes the following subsidiary plans which are explained under the process of developing a project management plan.

2. Project Documents

   Assumption log

   The assumption log contains information about expectations and pain points identified as affecting the project.

   Basis of estimates

   Basis of estimates indicates how the various estimates were borrowed and can be used to decide on how to respond to the difference of opinion.

   Cost forecasts

   Based on the project’s previous performance, the cost forecasts are used to determine if the project is within defined tolerance ranges for budget and to identify if any necessary change requests arise.

   Issue log

   The issue log is used to document and monitor who is responsible for resolving specific issues within a scheduled date.

   Lessons learned register

   The lessons learned register might contain information on effective responses for variances and corrective and preventive actions.

   Milestone list

   The milestone list shows the scheduled dates for particular milestones and is also used to check if the planned milestones have been accomplished.

   Quality reports

   The quality report includes quality management issues; which are also known as suggestions for the process, project, and product improvements; corrective actions recommendations (includes rework, defect/bugs repair, 100% inspection, and more); and the summary of findings from the Control Quality process.

   Risk register

   The risk register provides details on the threats and opportunities that have occurred during the execution of the project.

   Risk report

   The risk report provides information on the overall project and specified individual risks.

   Schedule forecasts

   Based on the project’s earlier performance, the schedule forecasts are used to determine if the project is within the defined tolerance ranges for schedule and to identify any necessary change requests.

3. Work Performance Information

   Work performance data is an output of the Direct and Manage Project Work process where the data is collected, analyzed, and integrated to produce work performance information for providing a sound foundation for taking project decisions. With the Performance information, the project manager can gain knowledge on status deliverables, implementation status for change requests and provide forecasted estimated time to complete.

4. Agreements

   The procurement agreement includes terms and conditions, and may also integrate other items that the buyer specifies regarding what the seller is to perform or provide. If the project is outsourcing part of the work, the project manager needs to oversee the contractor’s work to make certain that all the agreements meet the specific needs of the project while adhering to organizational procurement policies.

5. Enterprise Environmental Factors

   The Enterprise Environmental Factors are conditions that are not under the control of the project team. They vary widely depending on the nature of the environment and are as follows:

   Government or Industry Standards

   Includes aspects like, regulatory agency regulations, codes of conduct, product standards, quality standards, and workmanship standards which influence the process of monitoring and controlling the project work.

   Existing Human Resources

   The level of skills, disciplines, and knowledge, such as design, development, legal, contracting, and purchasing capabilities of the organization that influence the monitoring and controlling process.

   Stakeholder Risk Tolerances

   A crucial aspect at any given stage of the project work. The project manager should understand the tolerance level of the stakeholder as to how much negative impact can he sustain during the project’s lifecycle.

   Commercial Databases

   Acquiring knowledge of standardized cost estimating data, along with the industry risk study information, and risk databases from the previously undertaken projects to have a better understanding of the current project working procedure.

   Project Management Information System

   PMIS are system tools and techniques used in project management to deliver information. Project managers use the methods and tools to collect, combine and distribute information through electronic and manual means.

6. Organizational Process Assets

   Organizational process assets are the plans, processes, policies, procedures, and knowledge bases specific to and used by the performing organization. Organizational process assets may be grouped into two categories:

   1. Processes and Procedures

      The Processes and Procedures under the organizational process assets can be segregated into three stages –

      1. Initiating and Planning:

         Implementing guidelines and criteria’s used for tailoring the organization’s standard processes and procedures to satisfy the specific needs of the project.

         Effective planning of organizational standards such as policies, product and project life cycles and methods to maintaining quality policies and procedures are necessary for monitoring and controlling the project.

      2. Executing, Monitoring and Controlling:

         A method to change the existing control procedures and also to document how the changes are approved and validated. The process also includes keeping a tab on the financial control procedures, issue and defect management procedures, organizational communication requirements, Change and risk control procedure along with Process measurement and lessons learned database.

      3. Closing

         During the closing stage, the project manager will monitor the project closure guidelines, which includes focusing on the lessons learned, final project audits, evaluations and product validations.

   2. Corporate Knowledge Base

      The organizational knowledge base for storing and retrieving information includes;

      The knowledge base will comprise of various versions and baselines of the policies, procedures and project documents. The knowledge base also includes financial databases containing information on labor hours, incurred costs, budgets, and project costs overshoot.

      A project manager should also know historical information and lessons learned from previous project records and performance. For a project manager, should also have corporate knowledge of the issues and defects so that he/she can control and resolute the same in any problems arise.

      Finally, the corporate knowledge base also should have information on components that include insights into the process measurement databases and information on the project files from previous projects (Ex. scope, cost, schedule baselines and project calendars)

Tools and Techniques

1. Expert Judgment

   To ensure that the project performances matches the expectation, the project manager, in collaboration with the project management team uses expert judgment to interpret the information provided by the monitor and control processes. These expertise insights must be taken from individuals or groups who are specialized in the topics like;

   1. Earned Value Analysis,

   2. Interpretation and contextualization of data,

   3. Techniques to estimate duration and costs,

   4. Trend analysis,

   5. Technical knowledge of the industry and focus area of the project,

   6. Risk management, and

   7. Contract management.

2. Data Analysis

   Data analysis techniques that can be used include but are not limited to:

   Alternatives analysis

   Alternatives analysis is used to select the corrective actions or a combination of corrective and preventive measures to implement when a deviation occurs in the project management process.

   Cost-benefit analysis

   Cost-benefit analysis helps to determine the best corrective action regarding cost in case of project deviations.

   Earned value analysis

   Earned value provides an integrated perspective on the scope, schedule, and cost performance.

   Root cause analysis

   Root cause analysis focuses on identifying the main reasons for a problem. It can be used to determine the reasons for a deviation and the areas the project manager should focus on in order to achieve the objectives of the project.

   Trend analysis

   Trend analysis is used to forecast future performance based on past results. It looks ahead in the project for expected slippages and warns the project manager ahead of time that there may be problems later in the schedule if established trends persist. This information is made available early enough in the project timeline to give the project team time to analyze and correct any anomalies. The results of trend analysis can be used to recommend preventive actions if necessary.

   Variance analysis

   Variance analysis reviews the differences (or variance) between planned and actual performance. This can include duration estimates, cost estimates, resources utilization, resources rates, technical performance, and other metrics.

   Variance analysis may be conducted in each Knowledge Area based on its particular variables. In Monitor and Control Project Work, the variance analysis reviews the variances from an integrated perspective considering cost, time, technical, and resource variances about each other to get an overall view of variance on the project. This allows for the appropriate preventive or corrective actions to be initiated.

3. Decision Making

   A decision-making technique involves all the individuals, project management teams, and stakeholders to agree upon a single decision through the process of voting. This will enable the project to operate within the project management scope.

4. Meetings

   Meetings may be face-to-face, formal, informal or virtual. It might comprise of project team members stakeholders and others involved in the undertaken project. The main agenda is to circulate information regarding the project and to make sure that the expectations are clearly understood and met.

Outputs

1. Change Requests

   When both the planned results and actual results are compared, change requests will direct the project to expand, adjust, or reduce in the project and product scope, quality requirements, schedule and cost baselines. These changes will pave the way for the collection and documentation of new requirements and can impact the project management plan, documents or product deliverables.

   Note: All changes that meet the project’s change control criteria should go through the integrated change control process established for the project.

   Change requests may include the below-mentioned aspects:

   1. Corrective Action

      A deliberate activity that realigns the performance of the project work with the project management plan

   2. Preventive Action

      An intended activity that ensures the future performance of the project work is associated with the project management plan

   3. Defect Repair

      A calculated activity to modify an unusual product or product component.

2. Work Performance Reports

   These are the physical representation of work performance information compiled into project documents, focused on generating decisions, actions, and awareness. To maintain, store and distribute information, representation in the form of a project document is necessary. These work performance reports are a sub-division of project documents, and these reports may be provided for key stakeholders.

3. Project Management Plan Updates

   Changes identified during this process may affect the overall project management plan. These changes, after being processed through the appropriate change control process can lead to project management plan updates. Project management plan elements that may be updated include are

   • Scope management plan

   • Requirements management plan

   • Schedule management plan

   • Cost management plan

   • Quality management plan

   • Scope baseline

   • Schedule baseline

   • Cost baseline

4. Project Documents Updates

   Project documents that may be updated include:

   Schedule and cost forecast

   A document that stores information on the schedule and cost limit of the concerned project.

   Work performance report

   A document that contains the information on the number of hours that have been spent, the quality standards that have been met and the overall ability of the team.

   Issue log

   A document that contains the information about all the issues that arose during the project monitoring and controlling process and the time taken to resolve the issue and the outcome of the action taken.

Changes are bound to occur during a project. There are scenarios where even those well-drafted plans, will have varied results when compared with the actual planned values. Hence, performing the Monitor and Control Project Work process is essential to determine those changes. Monitor and Control Project Work process is crucial to meet the desired outcomes of the project. Because if one doesn’t measure the performance, they will not be able to know how the project is going, and this is a significant risk for the failure of the project.

The core feature of the project management process is to accomplish the project deliverables. These project deliverables must be formally accepted by the stakeholders. To ensure that the process is carried out smoothly, the validate scope process is implemented to verify and assure the quality of the deliverables.

Definition

Validate Scope is the process of formalizing acceptance of the completed project deliverables. A process that shows the stakeholders have received what was agreed and formalizing their approval. It is primarily concerned with the recognition of the product by validating each deliverable. This particular process is necessary for creating different documents like project document updates, work performance information, accepted deliverables and change requests.

Since the validate scope process mainly focuses on the deliverables, the verified deliverables are obtained from the control quality team. The deliverables are reviewed with the customer to ensure that they have been satisfactorily completed before they are received formally by the customer. Different outputs of the project management knowledge area are treated as the baselines for the final acceptance of the deliverables like scope baseline and work performance data.

The features that are involved in the validate scope process;

Inputs

1. Project Management Plan

   The Project Management Plan contains the Scope Management Plan which helps in specifying how formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables will be obtained. Described below are the Project management plan components:

   1. Scope management plan

      The scope management plan determines how formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables will be obtained.

   2. Requirements management plan

      The requirements management plan in the process which describes how the project requirements are validated.

   3. Scope baseline

      The scope baseline is compared to the actual results of the project at the point of completion to determine if a change, corrective or preventive action is necessary to be implemented in the project.

2. Project Documents

   The project documents that can be considered as inputs for the Validate Scope process are:

   1. Lessons Learned Register

      The lessons learned in the current project or in the previous project can be applied or implemented in the later phases or stages in the project, in an attempt to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of validating the project deliverables.

   2. Quality Reports

      The quality reports contain information regarding all the quality issues concerned with the project and the recommendations for improvement which were previously escalated by the project team. The quality report also includes details of finding provided by Control Quality Process. This information is reviewed and checked before product acceptance.

   3. Requirements Documentation

      The Requirements Documentation process lists all the project, product, and other types of requirements for the project and product, along with their acceptance criteria. Keeping these essential aspects in mind, the project manager has to deliver the required objectives to the stakeholder. A well-documented requirement makes it easier to detect any deviation in the scope agreed for the project or product.

   4. Requirements Traceability Matrix

      The Requirements Traceability Matrix links requirements to their origin and tracks them throughout the project lifecycle. It also compares the performance of the project with the project management plan and links a requirement to every objective to add business value to the deliverables.

3. Verified Deliverables

   Verified Deliverables is a process where the deliverables are completed and checked internally for correctness and quality through the Control Quality process.

4. Work Performance Data

   The Work Performance data includes the degree of compliance with requirements, number and severity of nonconformities.

Tools and Techniques

1. Inspection

   Inspection is the process of examining the work product to determine if it adheres to the documented standards. The results of an examination generally include measurements and may be conducted at any level. Inspections are sometimes also called as reviews, product reviews, audits, and walkthroughs.

2. Group Decision-Making Techniques

   Group Decision Making Technique evaluates alternatives in a group setting and reaching an agreement leading to a final decision, which will cater to delivering the desired objectives.

Outputs

1. Accepted Deliverables

   Accepted deliverables are the deliverables that meet the acceptance criteria of the project management plan and are approved by the appropriate Stakeholders. Getting approval is the primary output of this process and is typically performed by the project manager, the customer, the sponsor, and the functional or operational managers.

2. Change Requests

   It is assured that all final deliverables would be entirely accepted by the stakeholders and such unaccepted deliverables are documented along with the reason for non-approval. In such cases, the deliverables will require changes, and that is when the process of change request will come into effect to repair the defect. After the change request is executed, they are reviewed through – Perform Integrated Change Process method.

3. Work Performance Information

   Information about which deliverables have been started, their progress, which deliverables have been finished, or which has been accepted. The Work Performance Information process takes place at every particular stage of the project lifecycle.

4. Project Documents Updates

   Documents that define the product or report status of the product upon completion. Verified project documents may require approvals from the customer or sponsor in the form of signatures or signoffs.

   1. Lessons learned register

      The lessons learned register is on a timely basis updated with information on challenges the project team encountered and how they could have been avoided as well as approaches that worked well for validating deliverables.

   2. Requirements documentation

      The requirements documentation will be updated with the actual results of validation activity. In certain situations, the actual results obtained may on a more significant note outweigh the project requirements.

   3. Requirements traceability matrix

      All the results derived through the validation process are updated within the requirements traceability matrix. It also includes information on the various methods used and the actual outcome of the process.

The validate scope process plays an important role as it mainly focuses on verifying the deliverables that are to be handed over to the stakeholders. The primary function is to achieve deliverables that meet the standards and criteria mentioned by the stakeholders in the project management plan. Without implementing the validate scope process, the deliverables will not be accepted and will have to undergo the change request process.

Requirements can be classified into various types, like business requirements, solution requirements, stakeholders’ requirements, transition requirements, quality requirements, etc. Stakeholder’s play an essential role in influencing the success of the project as they involve in determining, documenting, and managing the requirements. Requirements are regarded as the foundation of the WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) and for the project managers to work on a particular project would find it difficult without a requirement document because they won’t have anything to work on.

Definition

The Collect Requirement is a process that determines, as well as documents and manages the needs and requirements of the stakeholders, to meet the objectives of the project management task. The documentation that takes place within the collect requirement process is considered important as it provides the foundation for defining and managing the scope of the project.

The collect requirements document contains details about the objectives that are needed to satisfy stakeholders’ requirements and also to ensure the project satisfaction. The collect requirement acts as a framework that provides a baseline for the project’s budget, schedule, and quality specifications, risk, and resources plan.

Inputs

1. Project Charter

   To develop the detailed requirements of the project, the project manager uses the high-level description derived from the project charter to determine the scope of the product.

2. Project Management Plan

   The project management plan includes the following components;

   1. Scope Management Plan

      As the scope management plan determines the essential and valuable aspects of a project, it will provide clarity to the project teams to decide on which type of requirements are to be collected for the project.

   2. Requirements Management Plan

      The main priority of the project manager is to define and document the needs of the stakeholder. The requirements management plan plays a crucial role in providing the methods/processes that can be used throughout the Collect Requirements process to help the Project Managers achieve these needs.

   3. Stakeholder Management Plan

      It is understood that the stakeholder is an integral part of the project. The stakeholder management plan is used by the project manager to understand the stakeholder communication requirements and their level of engagement to assess and adapt to meet their level of participation in achieving requirement activities.

3. Project Documents

   The inputs that can be considered under project documents are listed as below :

   1. Assumption Log

      The process of assumption log identifies the assumptions regarding the product, project, stakeholders, environmental and other essential factors that can influence the outcome of a particular project

   2. Lessons Learned Register

      The lesson learned process is used to provide information about the effective requirements collection techniques which especially use an adaptive and iterative product development methodology.

   3. Stakeholder Register

      Identifying the key stakeholders of a project is an important task, as they provide information on the requirements of a project. This identification process is made simpler with the use of the stakeholder register. The register helps in capturing the significant needs and primary expectations of the stakeholders that relate to the project.

4. Business Documents

   The business case is what influences the technique of business documents under collect requirements process. This particular technique can be used to describe the required, desired, and optional criteria necessary to meet the business needs.

5. Agreements

   The Agreements technique is used to collect information about the project and the product requirements necessary for the completion of a particular project.

6. Enterprise Environmental Factors

   The enterprise environmental factors which can influence the Collection Requirements Process are as follows – Organization’s culture, Infrastructure, Personnel administration, and Marketplace condition.

7. Organizational Process Assets

   A project’s policies, procedures, historical information, and the lesson learned repository which includes information from the previous projects success is the organizational process assets that influence the Collection requirements process.

Tools and Techniques

1. Expert Judgment

   Listed below are the topics in which the individuals or groups should have specialized knowledge and expertise :

   

2. Data Gathering

   Data gathering techniques that can be used for Collecting Requirements process are :

   1. Brain Storming

      A group thinking activity, where several people from various teams come together to list requirements for a project. And during the brainstorming session, new ideas are generated from existing plans, which helps to identify new requirements.

   2. Interviews

      Interviewing is the first collect requirements technique. It can be done through both formal and informal ways. The critical feature of this process is that it helps the project manager to interview experienced project participants, sponsors, stakeholders and other executives, and subject matter experts who can aid in identifying and defining the features and functions of the desired product deliverables.

   3. Focus Groups

      Focus groups bring together prequalified stakeholders and subject matter experts to learn about their expectations and attitudes about a proposed project. Focus Group is a technique used to get a specific set of stakeholders’ requirements. For instance, first, the project manager can organize a meeting with executive directors of a company to get their requirements, and then arrange a separate meeting with the functional managers to understand their requirements.

   4. Questionnaires and Surveys

      This technique is best used when there are more stakeholders involved in a project. For example, if there are 200 stakeholders associated with the project, collecting information from each individual to assess their requirements will consume a lot of time. Hence, the project manager is requested to prepare a questionnaire and conduct surveys to collect their requirements list.

   5. Benchmarking

      Benchmarking is a process that is used to compare the actual or planned practices – procedures and operations, to those of comparable organizations (internal or external) to identify best practices, generate ideas for improving the scope, and provide a framework for measuring the actual performance.

3. Data Analysis

   Data analysis mainly deals with the processes that are related to document analysis. The primary purpose of document analysis is to review and assess all the relevant documents information. This process is used to obtain requirements by carefully analyzing the existing documents and identifying relevant details on the requirements.

   Various documents are analyzed to help bring out the necessary information for the requirement process, and they are as follows :

   

4. Decision Making

   The decision-making techniques that can assist in the Collect requirement process are :

   1. Voting

      Voting is the collective decision-making technique and an assessment process which has various alternatives with a defined outcome. These techniques are further used to generate, classify, and prioritize product requirements. Listed below are the examples of voting techniques:

      1. Unanimity: Unanimity is a decision that is reached whereby everyone agrees on a single course of action. One effective way to achieve accord is the Delphi technique, in which a selected group of experts and stakeholders answer questionnaires and provide their feedback regarding the questions asked which cover all the areas of the project. These responses are resent to the decision makers to and fro until a consensus is reached among the stakeholders.

      2. Majority: The suggestions or ideas that are gathered from the experts are chosen based on the majority of people backing the process. This will allow the project manager to select and implement the best of ideas to achieve the requirements.

      3. Plurality: A decision is finalized based on the opinion of the most significant group in the organization, even when there is no room for a decision based on the majority.

   2. Autocratic Decision Making

      As the title states, the decision is taken by a single individual who has the ultimate authority in the organization.

   3. Multicriteria decision analysis

      A technique in which a decision matrix is used to provide a systematic and analytical approach for determining criteria such as risk levels, uncertainty, and valuation, to evaluate and rank many ideas.

5. Data Representation

   The data representation techniques that can be used for the process of collecting requirements are as follows;

   1. Affinity diagram

      A technique where all the ideas that are collected or gathered are segregated accordingly based on their similarities

   2. Idea/mind mapping

      The ideas that are generated through the brainstorming sessions are consolidated into a single map to filter out the conventional concepts and understand the differences in opinions which will help in developing new plans.

6. Interpersonal and Team Skills

   The interpersonal and team skills techniques that can be used for the process of collecting requirements are as follows;

   1. Nominal group technique

      The technique which uses skills to prioritize the already existing ideas rather than developing new ideas. In this process, the plans are ranked based on their value, and this helps the teams to focus on the essential concepts to generate the project requirements.

   2. Observations

      Observation, which is also known as ‘Job Shadowing’ is a process where an observer views a business expert performing his job. This process is mainly to strictly observe the activities taking place across various areas to find out what are the actual requirements of the consumer, stakeholder, sponsor, etc.

   3. Facilitation

      Facilitation is a technique which has focused sessions that bring key stakeholders together to define product requirements. In general, each group of project stakeholders will look to the project from their very own perspective and express their requirements. Workshops are considered a primary technique for quickly defining cross-functional requirements and reconciling stakeholder differences.

7. Context Diagram

   To have actual knowledge of understanding the scope, the context diagram provides an example of the scope model, which will allow the project manager to visualize how a business system (Process, Equipment and Computer systems) will work. This process is used to find out how the business system and the other users interact with each other.

   

8. Prototypes

   The technique, which involves the process of creating a model of the actual product that, is to be achieved. The team will build this model of the product and pass it on to the stakeholders for collecting their feedback. As the model is a tangible product, the stakeholders can check it thoroughly and request for changes if they find any, instead of waiting until the end by only sharing and discussing abstract representations and ideas.

Outputs

1. Requirements Documentation

   A technique that describes how individual requirements meet the business need for the project. The requirements may start out at a high level and become progressively more detailed as more information about the requirements is available.

   Even before the requirements can be listed down in the project plan, they need to be unambiguous, traceable, complete, consistent, and acceptable to the key stakeholders. The requirements document may take different forms.

   It can be a simple document listing all the requirements categorized by stakeholders and priority, to more elaborate forms containing a detailed summary, description, and attachments.

   Components of requirements documentation can include,

   1. Business Requirements

      • Business and project objectives for traceability

      • Business rules for the performing organization

      • Guiding the principles of the organization.

   2. Stakeholder Requirements

      • Keeping a note of the impacts that the stakeholder’s requirements might have on other organizational areas

      • Noting how the stakeholder’s requirements might impact entities inside or outside the performing organization

      • Stakeholder communication and reporting requirements.

   3. Solution Requirements

      • Providing solutions for functional and nonfunctional requirements

      • Providing solutions to meet the technological and standard compliance requirements

      • Solutions that provide Support and training requirements

      • Providing solutions that maintain the Quality requirements

      • Solution requirements that can be documented textually, in models, or both.

   4. Project Requirements

      • Requirements based on the levels of service, performance, safety, compliance, etc

      • Those requirements that are approved and come under the acceptance criteria.

   5. Transition Requirements

   6. Requirements assumptions, dependencies, and constraints

2. Requirements Traceability Matrix

   The Requirements Traceability Matrix is a document that links requirements throughout the validation process. The purpose of the Requirements Traceability Matrix is to ensure that all requirements defined for a system add business value by connecting it to the business and project objectivities.

   It’s a process that provides a way to track requirements throughout the project lifecycle, helping to ensure that requirements approved in the requirements documentation are delivered at the end of the project. Finally, it provides a structure for managing changes to the product scope.

   The various kinds of tracing processes that are conducted under the Requirements Traceability Matrix stage;

   1. Business needs

      The project manager should maintain a track of all the business needs that are required to be accomplished.

   2. Project objectives

      It is imperative that the project manager keeps track of the project objectives in an attempt to ensure that they are achieved in the due process.

   3. Project scope/WBS deliverables

      The project manager should always maintain a track of the project scope. If the project scope deviates, the deliverables might not be achieved.

   4. Product design

      To efficiently accomplish the undertaken the project, the project manager has to trace the path of the product design, as it was finalized and given approval by all the key stakeholders involved in the project.

   5. Product development

      Tracing the development as to ensure that the project has achieved its desired scope at every stage of the project lifecycle.

   6. Test strategy and test scenarios

      A proper procedure has to be developed to test the product after execution, and also the project manager has to conduct test scenarios through which, the product has to be correctly tested to produce the required deliverables.

   7. High-level requirements for more detailed requirements

      The project manager can’t consider all the requirements to have the same scope, there would exist high-level requirements that garner more scope. So, to satisfy these requirements, the project manager has to allocate more requirements to such components.

Collect Requirements is an essential process because if the requirements from the stakeholders are not collected properly, the scope of the project may risk being faulty. Suitable techniques to collect requirements should be selected and implemented by the project manager to have successful scope management. Every detail is considered important in judging and finalizing the main requirements. So, with all the features/components mentioned in the article, one can collect the requirements to meet the project objectives.

The Control Scope is a process which is probably one of the most crucial in maintaining the scope baseline and changes the scope baseline whenever necessary. The project managers will mainly look to avoid the scope creep, which is a process where the scope is expanded in an uncontrolled manner.

Definition of Control Scope in a Project

Control Scope is the process of monitoring the status of the project and product scope and managing changes to the scope baseline. The Control Scope is a process which allows the scope baseline to be maintained throughout the lifecycle of the project.

The important components used to develop the Control Scope process are;

Control Scope – Inputs

1. Project Management Plan

   The process of controlling scope involves many objectives that are to be met; the following criteria’s from the project management plan will help in managing scope.

   1. Scope Management Plan

      The process of monitoring and controlling the project scope is the key benefit of the scope management plan.

   2. Requirements Management Plan

      A process that is a part of the project management plan, which describes how the project requirements are analyzed, documented, and managed.

   3. Change Management Plan

      As the title suggests, the process of change management mainly concentrates on the changes that are taking place in the project during its lifecycle.

   4. Configuration Management Plan

      The process that is used to identify the components that require formal change control and implementing the process of control change to monitor the desired changes.

   5. Scope Baseline

      Scope baseline is the approved project scope and used during scope change management to determine and prevent scope creep. Scope baseline primarily comprises of the project scope statement, work breakdown structure, and WBS dictionary. Only upon implementing this scope baseline can the project be directed in the right direction.

   6. Performance Measurement Baseline

      During the process of using an earned value analysis, the performance measurement baseline is used to compare the actual results to determine if a change, corrective action or preventive action is necessary.

2. Project Documents

   The list of project documents that can be considered as inputs for this process are –

   1. Lessons Learned Register

      To improve the scope control of the project, the lessons learned during the earlier stages of the project are accordingly applied or implemented in the project

   2. Requirements Documentation

      The project requirements should always be traced, tested, measured, complete, consistent, and importantly acceptable to the stakeholders. To ensure that this happens, the requirements should be well-documented to make it easier for the project manager to detect any deviation in the project.

   3. Requirements Traceability Matrix

      The Requirements Traceability Matrix is a tool that helps in detecting and identifying the impact of any changes that affect the project to deviate from the projected scope baseline and deliverables.

3. Work Performance Data

   Work Performance Data is a method that documents the number of changes requests received, number of approved changes and also the number of project deliverables completed.

4. Organizational Process Assets

   The Organizational Process Assets includes any particular policies and procedures that have been laid down by the performing organization regarding scope management. It also covers aspects like formal and informal scopes that exist in a company and also looks into the methods of monitoring and reporting.

Tools and Techniques of Control Scope in a Project

1. Data Analysis

   The Data analysis techniques that can be used in the control scope process include –

   1. Variance Analysis

      Variance Analysis is a method that is used to determine the degree and cause of differences that occur between the project baseline and the actual performance happening during the execution stage. Only when the comparison is made, can the project manager analyze the performance of the project.

   2. Trend Analysis

      Trend analysis is the method used to examine a project’s performance from time-to-time to see whether the performance of the project is deteriorating or improving.

Control Scope – Outputs

1. Work Performance Information

   The Work Performance Information documents information on how the project scope is actually performing when compared to the scope baseline. The cause for the scope variance and the results that the changes yield, everything is documented under the Work Performance Information. The entire process will provide a foundation for making scope decisions for the project.

2. Change Requests

   Change requests to the scope baseline or other aspects of the project management plan usually arise when analyses are carried out on the scope performance. Change requests consist of preventive or corrective actions, defect repairs, or enhancement requests.

3. Project Management Plan Updates

   Now and then, the project management plan needs to be updated. The main areas for updating are –

   1. Scope Management Plan

      The scope management plan will be updated to reflect any changes that occur in the project to show how the scope will be managed.

   2. Scope Baseline Updates

      Whenever the approved change requests affect the project scope, the scope statement, the WBS and the WBS dictionary are to be altered to meet the changes and are executed accordingly.

   3. Schedule Baseline

      Any changes to the schedule baseline are incorporated in response to the approved changes in scope, resources, or schedule estimates. In certain situations, a revised scheduled baseline is required to provide a realistic basis for performance measurements.

   4. Cost Baseline

      Cost baseline purpose is the same as schedule baseline. Whatever changes that occur are incorporated in response to the approved changes in scope, resources, or cost estimates. In certain situations, a revised cost baseline is required to provide a realistic basis for performance measurements.

   5. Performance Measurement Baseline

      Every change related to the performance measurement baseline are incorporated in response to approved changes in scope, schedule performance, or cost estimates. In some cases, a change request is put forth to revise the performance measurement baseline to provide a realistic basis for performance measurement.

4. Project Documents Updates

   Some of the documents that may need to be updated are the requirements documentation and the requirements traceability matrix. The requirements documentation describes how a project’s requirements meet a business need. The matrix links the requirements to the need and helps trace its development throughout the project’s lifecycle. Ensuring that both documents are up to date helps manage and control changes to a project’s scope.

   1. Lessons Learned Register

      The lessons learned register could be updated with techniques that are efficient and effective in controlling scope, including causes of differences and chosen corrective actions for the completion of the project.

   2. Requirements Documentation

      The requirements documentation is mainly used to be updated with additional or changed requirements.

   3. Requirements Traceability Matrix

      The primary purpose of requirements traceability matrix is that it has to be updated to reflect updates in requirement documentation.

The importance of control scope is that it documents the changes and the stakeholders will be informed about it. Other management plans such as the scope management plan will also be affected by the project management activity provides feedback on how the project manager will implement the approved changes. As a result, this will also give a significant impact on the entire project lifecycle. This process will also necessitate the need to update the project documents, requirement documents, and the traceability matrix.

One of the main reasons why a project fails is primarily because of the scope issues. It’s imperative that all projects need a scope management plan. In the absence of a scope management plan, project stakeholders tend to assume that, the project is their favor and this will result in unexpected outcomes. The main objective of the project manager is to ensure that the project runs smoothly and to do that, he/she has to establish and define the project’s scope well.

Definition of Scope Management Plan

The Scope Management Plan is the collection of processes that are used to ensure that the project includes all the tasks required to complete the project while excluding all the work/tasks that are out of scope. The primary purpose of the Scope Management plan is to define how the project scope will be explained, developed/structured, and verified.

The processes that are required to create a ‘Scope Management Plan’ are as follows :

Inputs

1. Project Charter

   The project charter which defines the statement of objectives in a project, like, setting project goals, roles and responsibilities, identifying stakeholders is used to provide the project framework required to plan the scope management process. The project charter provides the high-level project description and product characteristics from the project statement of work.

2. Project Management Plan

   The subsidiary plans that are listed under the project management plan are used to create the scope management plan and will influence the approach taken for planning and managing project scope. The project management plan works as a baseline that describes the importance of creating a scope management plan for a project. Without incorporating useful guidelines and methods to achieve the project deliverables, a project will stumble upon a roadblock.

   1. Quality Management Plan

      Managing the project and product scope can be primarily influenced by how the organization’s quality policy, methodologies, and standards are implemented on the project.

   2. Project life cycle Description

      Project lifecycle is nothing but the process that describes the phases or stages that the project has gone through starting from the initiation stage to the project closure stage.

   3. Development Approach

      The development approach defines and determines whether or not the project manager will implement waterfall, iterative, adaptive, agile, or a hybrid development approach.

3. Enterprise Environmental Factors

   Enterprise environmental factors are considered inputs to most planning processes. Under the EEF’s the project management options may be enhanced or constrained resulting in a positive or an adverse outcome.

   1. Organization’s Culture

      Many times the outcome of the project can be judged based on the organization’s culture. If in case, the organization is functioning under a productive work culture, then the project has high chances of achieving the desired objective with the implementation of explicit scope management. On the contrary, if there is a mixed or ineffective work culture, then the chances of a project succeeding is minimal regardless of a proper scope management plan.

   2. Infrastructure

      Infrastructure plays an essential role in defining the success of implementing a scope management plan for a project. The reason being that the existing facilities and the equipment used in the organization have to be of high standards to meet the expectations defined in the project management plan by the stakeholders. If the project manager moves forward with inadequate infrastructure, then it could result in producing deliverables below the required standards.

   3. Personnel administration

      Based on the policies and administrative guidelines that exist in the organization, the project manager can define the performance of the scope management plan. For example, when the company has proper staffing and retention policies to retain those well qualified and trained employees, who have experience in executing, monitoring and closing a project, it is bound to realize the importance and utilize the scope management plan to its highest capabilities. Likewise, if it has the personnel, who are inexperienced or not well trained, then it will seriously take a toll on the performance of a project.

   4. Marketplace conditions

      The concept of marketplace conditions is also a vital aspect that defines the scope management plan, as it allows the project manager to know his competitors in the market, the market growth rate, and also the intensity of competitiveness that exists in the current market. Only when all these are taken into consideration, can the project manager define and execute an effective scope management plan.

4. Organizational Process Assets

   The Organizational Process Assets are categorized into two types, namely ;

   1. Processes and Procedures

      The essential features of Processes and Procedures are – Initiation, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling and Closing. A successful project always inherits these procedures and processes, as they are crucial to keeping track of all the proceeding taking place during the lifecycle of the project. Thus, the project manager while implementing the scope management plan should consider these important aspects.

   2. Corporate Knowledge Base

      The corporate knowledge base includes information based on the following features to determine and draft a scope management plan.

      1. Configuration management knowledge bases – Provides information on the organization standards, policies, procedures and project documents.

      2. Financial databases – Provides information on the allocated budgets, cost overshoots, incurred costs and labor hours.

      3. Historical information and lessons learned knowledge bases – Provides information on the project records and documents, project closure information, it will also showcase the project selection process and project performance witnessed during the previous projects.

      4. Issue and defect management databases – Providing information on the issues and defects that occurred during the previous project execution and also sharing the outcomes of the actions taken to tackle these issues.

      5. Process measurement databases – Providing information on the methods and tools used to measure the performance of the previous project to compare them with the undertaken project to assess their performance.

      6. Project files from previous projects – Collecting valuable data of the prior project files – from the scope, cost, time and performance baselines that were levied for the previous project.

      All the above-furnished information will allow the project manager to create an effective scope management plan.

Tools and Techniques of Scope Management Plan

1. Expert Judgment

   To ensure that the project manager creates an effective scope management plan, he/she has to collect inputs from subject matter experts and stakeholders as to what valuable insights that they would like the project manager to implement in the plan. This process will provide accurate details of how to handle obstacles and issues if any arises, as it also collects details from professionals who have been trained in developing scope management plans.

2. Data Analysis

   A data analysis technique that can be used for scope management plan includes – various ways of collecting project requirements, elaborating the project and product scope, creating the product, validating the project scope, and finally controlling the project scope.

3. Meetings

   Meeting that includes attendees like project managers, the project sponsor, selected project team members, selected stakeholders will discuss and finalize the aspects required to define the scope management plan.

Outputs

1. Scope Management Plan

   The scope management plan is a component of the project or program management plan that describes how the scope will be defined, developed, monitored, controlled, and verified. The scope management plan is a significant input into the Develop Project Management Plan process and the other scope management processes.

   The scope management plan is a major input into the Develop Project management process, as it is a component of the project management plan that describes how the scope will be defined, developed, monitored, controlled and verified.

   The components of the scope management plan include;

   1. Process to prepare a detailed project scope statement

   2. The process that allows creating WBS from the detailed project scope statement

   3. The process that establishes how the WBS will be maintained and approved

   4. The process that explains how formal acceptance of completed project deliverables are to be obtained

   5. The process to control the requests for changes to the detailed project scope statement will be documented.

   Based on the needs of the project, the scope management plan can be broadly framed or highly detailed or either can be formal or informal.

2. Requirements Management Plan

   A process that describes how the project requirements will be analyzed, documented and managed. The rightly chooses the most effective relationship for the project and documents the approach in the requirements management plan.

   The main components of requirements management plan focuses on;

   1. How the requirement activities are planned, tracked, and reported.

   2. How the changes to the product will be initiated.

   3. The procedures required for analyzing the impacts, and methods used to trace and report the issues.

   4. Getting details of the authorization levels that are required to approve the changes made.

   5. The conditions required to rank the implemented processes.

   6. Focusing on why and how the product metrics are being used.

   7. Traceability structure to reflect which requirement features will be captured on the traceability matrix.

The Scope management plan is an excellent management tool that is used to effectively handling and adjusting to a project’s essential baselines and activities to ensure that they align with the agreed guidelines to accomplish the required objectives.