It is my pleasure to begin a new topic to get value advices and exchange ideas with different minds.
I am gonna develop a final paper to get my certification in Project Management in an accredited university.
I would like to prepare a meaningful project highlighting the relationship between these two areas "Scope and Risk". In my point of view, these areas needs a special attention, of course, without forsake the others.
Please, feel free to share an interesting content to me and help me with this task.
In the early stages of scope management, risk is highest as there are some levels of uncertainty in the tasks. However, as mentioned above, risks comes in two forms - positive and negative. It is important for the project manager and team to determine which risks can be exploited (+ risks) and which to mitigate or avoid (- risks). Lessons learnt are good, but it is imperative to review risk for every project as part of due diligence Saving Changes...
Relationship is directly proportional. Project Scope and its understanding is very much required to identify and assess Risk. Scope provides the boundary to Risk Managment. Saving Changes...
Mudassar KhanProgram (Project )Manager| Woodward Canada IncPeterborough, ON, Canada
Project Scope and Project Risks should be documented during initiating and more rigorous risks are elaborated during project planning. Risk is sometimes directly related with project scope Saving Changes...
Dear Marco and colleagues, I believe that I am late for discussion, yet the proper use of resource estimates is essential to meet the project scope, thus minimizing unnecessary risks. However, for a sound definition of scope, a safety margin needs to be defined in its estimation. Uncontrollable variables and constraint theory are readings that may help you Saving Changes...
Chanukya RajagopalaDirector - IT Strategy - R & D| iPOCA Private LtdUnited Kingdom
Scope is defined extensively at start of a project and good project managers can work with stakeholders to provision or provide contingency for Scope change, though this is a demanding proposition. It raises a question, if scope change is anticipated, why not explore it and accept it as scope at the start of a project. Unexpected scope change, is a known RISK in every project and every project manager has this element of anticipation on his radar. In turn, some Risks when accepted cause Scope Change.
The relationship between Scope and Risk exists from the moment a Project is deemed necessary to address an Gap/Problem/Idea/Opportunity.(GPIO). At that juncture, of a GPIO, if a scope is not evolved, a Risk is born, especially, if its a Gap or a Problem driving the need for change. Seldom is this realised at this stage and most times its importance is watered down under the title of "Initial Risks". These Initial Risks get credence further down in the Feasibility Analysis or during formal Risk Identification process at Proposal/Initiation.
The relationship between Scope and Risk is recognised by good project leaders and continiously managed. Unlike many project elements, the Scope and Risk are living concepts, which require constant monitoring and managing. I have come across projects that have a defined scope and deliverables and absolutely no necessity for a scope change. Despite the Scope and Deliverable not changing, the path to achieve the deliverable has caused change to the APPROACH TO ACHEIVE THE DEFINED SCOPE. This gives rise to Risk. So despite Scope remaining static, the change in Approach to acheive a static scope raises risk. Management of this risk requires a dynamic approach.
Mostly, we view scope increase as a potential impact on effort/time/costs, however, tracking it as a risk, allows an intellectually assessed decision to be made to contract/constrict/reduce risk, thereby brining savings and benefits of effort/time/costs. When a Senior User/Business Process Owner/ Project Lead/Business Lead write a GPIO document /proposal for project, the scope defined may be based on a few assumptions, which may or may not be conveyed to the project management team. These assumptions, when unscaled by the Senior user/... can cause a bi-directional movement in scope when a good Project manager critically analyses the project scope. When the Project Management team lack authority to validate scope, these assumptions go unchecked and can cause missed chances to save on effort/time/costs or increase efforts/time/costs unnecessarily. So, apart from project factors, the relationship between Scope and time are many times driven by NON PROJECT MANAGEMENT factors, on which the project team have very little control. I came across a E-Commerce project which was handed down to the project team with a Delivery Date. The scope was handed down- "to have a transactional website by a certain date". When the project team started the project, they realised that within a year of Launch date the chosen web platform scheduled to undergo an upgrade, which meant, that a year later, the website and all the ecommerce plugins had to undergo transformation to the new platform. Technically, it can be viewed as a risk outside of this project, but a sensible approach would be to include this outside risk as TOP RISK amongst the Initial risks and assess this under Feasibility analysis. However, the project went ahead, since the decision to launch the E-com website was made. The Platform upgrade was listed as Out of scope for the project, hence it never got Risk assessed to the extent necessary. A year later, the transformation project was launched and during the Analysis phase, it was found that some architecture changes could have been put into the first development to enable the transformation to be undertaken as a transition, with minimal changes. Since this option was not explored, the website had to be redeveloped from scratch on the new platform, effectively writing off all the costs and expenses on the first development. This again, exposes the lack of authority to project team can deny a business exposure to positives and negatives from a project.
Top Risks in most projects, refer directly or indirectly to Scope changes. Providing visibility of scope as a risk , raises prepardness amongst stakeholders at every Risk Review. Indeed, all the other risks too have equal or variying visibility and management, Scope risk review has a massive incentive, both ways, i.e. to prevent scope creeps and identify scope reduction and implement it.
A whole new school of thought can be developed to describe the "Relationship between Scope and Risk". Perhaps you could cheerlead it with your write up. All the very best. I am sure you will do well. Saving Changes...
Mudassar KhanProgram (Project )Manager| Woodward Canada IncPeterborough, ON, Canada
if scope is not clearly defined on the onset, there is a risk of scope creep, or "scope at large" where continuous revisions and additions are done resulting is cost escalations. Remember in projects costs are best controlled on the onset of the project with proper scope and design. Once the project is in progress the cost of altering the project is very high due to reworks and project risks are higher as changes may not be compatible with original design/scope. Saving Changes...
