Scope Management and Baseline Development

Scope Management and Baseline Development

Course Description

The scope management and baseline development course offer advanced techniques in project management. During the scope management and baseline development course, you will learn the fundamentals of the project scope, work breakdown structure, and performance managing baseline.

The scope management and baseline development course help you take control of your project by analyzing the risks and uncertainties.

You face three critical challenges when you start a new project: time, cost, and scope management. No matter what the project is, from construction, research program, and software design to landing a rover on Mars, you would require monitoring and controlling the project constantly to accomplish your objectives within the expected time and budget. However, there is always a risk that something might happen during the project you had not anticipated.

By identifying early alarming signs, you can have a broader insight into the uncertainty areas and take the project under control by taking inhibitive correction actions. The scope management and baseline development training course give you a great perspective on identifying those warning indicators and taking effective measures to keep them under control.

Scope management is the process of defining what work is required and then making sure all of that work – and only that work – is done.

A scope management plan should include the detailed process of scope determination, its management, and its control. Thus, panning in advance is essential.

To identify scope and requirements, we should discuss these with the different stakeholders. Gathering requirements from only a few stakeholders or only the sponsor might lead to the incorrect scope definition.

All projects are governed by hard rules like scope, deadlines, and budget. These are all part of a project baseline, and without them, you don’t have a project. But what you might end up with is a potentially endless odyssey that no one will enjoy.

The simple definition of a project baseline is the starting point for your project plan. Once it’s established, you use it to measure progress and overall performance. When you’re wondering whether you’re on track and within budget, this can easily be determined by looking at the baseline.

A project baseline allows you to efficiently oversee and manage how a change in your schedule, cost, or scope affects everything else. When you’ve integrated all three elements properly, you can, for example, see how a delay in the schedule will affect the cost of the project and even change its scope. When integration is incomplete or nonexistent, problems may not be recognized until it’s too late for a cost-effective solution.

Course Objectives

• Understand and describe the scope, schedule, and cost concepts
• Plan the scope of the project
• Plan the process of a project
• Truly appreciate the importance of a good project scope management
• Describe the process of planning scope management
• Understand and explain the importance of validating scope and how it relates to defining the scope and controlling it
• Develop methods for collecting and documenting requirements to meet stakeholder needs and expectations
• Explain the scope definition process and describe the contents of a project scope statement
• Discuss the process for creating a work breakdown structure using the analogy, top-down, bottom-up, and mind-mapping approaches
• Evaluate a practical and useful work breakdown structure (WBS)
• Validate a project schedule
• Discuss schedule compression techniques
• Evaluate cost estimations
• Validate cost
• Identify warning indicators and offer corrective actions
• Develop an on-the-job action plan

Course Modules

Lesson 1 – Overview of Scope Management and Baseline Development

• Scope
• Performance Managing Baseline (PMB)
• Managing Project Performance

Lesson 2 – Project Scope Definition

• Project scope statement
• Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
• Project scope change contrul plan

Lesson 3 – Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

• WBS grouping methods: Deliverable, Lifecycle, Geography, Function
• Product-oriented WBS
• WBS coding
• WBS-level of detail
• WBS- task completion criteria
• WBS dictionary
• WBS checklist

Lesson 4 – Assigning Scope Plan

• Work assignment sheet
• Scope of Work (SOW)

Lesson 5 – Verifying The Work

• Scope verification
• Work acceptance
• Change requests

Lesson 6 – Adapting The Scope

• Incorporate approved Scope Changes to baseline
• Update and Communicate Approved Scope Statement and WBS
• Register Lessons Learned

Lesson 7 – Organizational Breakdown Matrix

• Responsibilities assignments matrix
• Work authorization
• Contractual documentation

Lesson 8 – The Scope Baseline

• Baseline definition
• Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB)
• Management Reserve
• Performance Measurement
• Managing Process
• Performance Management
• Corrective Action
• Change Contrul