Determining Communication Strategy

Because a project often involves many people, it is important to develop a strategy to streamline communications and ensure no one is forgotten. This guide will help you to develop this strategy.

Determining Constraints

This guide will help you to understand and document the constraints of a project, which include any limiting factors such as time, budget, resources, etc.

Defining Assumptions, Constraints, and Out-of-Scope Items

A good project scope should include assumptions made, restrictions, pre-made decisions, and expectations for acceptance. This guide will help you to identify and document these things.

Assessing Stakeholders

A stakeholder assessment is used to help define the relationship and communication requirements between the project team and each stakeholder or stakeholder group.​

Identifying Stakeholders

Use this guide to help you ensure no relevant stakeholders are forgotten early in the project, as this is critical to project success.

Capability Model

Use this guide to build a model of the structure and relationships of the functional capabilities within your organization.

Defining Scope Using Capability Architecture

This guide will help you to interpret and use existing capability architecture to determine scope.

Organizational Model

Use this guide to build a model of the structure and relationships of the people or groups within your organization.

Using an Organizational Model to Define Scope

This guide will help you to interpret and use existing organizational model(s) to determine scope.

Product Model

Use this guide to build a hierarchical model of the products offered by your organization.

Using a Product Model to Define Scope

This guide will help you to interpret and use existing product model(s) to determine scope.

Identifying Alternatives

This guide is a helpful starting point in conducting alternative assessments, which will help to ensure that the chosen course of action is truly the most effective way to expend organizational resources. It is important to do this even if you believe you have the correct solution already determined.

Project Outcome Requirements

Use this guide to understand and craft concrete project outcome requirements.

Scope Context Model

Use this guide to build a model of the overall scope and any relevant context for your stakeholders.

Planning Scope Management

Project scopes are subject to change as the project progresses. This guide will help you plan for and manage these changes as they come, so they do not derail your project.

Managing Scope Change Requests

This guide is a helpful follow-up to the Planning Scope Management guide.

Business Technology Landscape

Use this guide to build a BTL, which depicts the business and system interactions needed to support a business capability.

Event Analysis

Use this guide to conduct event analysis, which is a technique employed to understand the responsibilities of the solution and what it must be prepared to handle.

System Context Model

Use this guide to build a system context model, which provides a mapping of the interfaces associated with a specific system.

Decomposing Scope Deliverables

Use this guide to help you break down scope-related requirements into smaller, manageable components.

Baseline Scope

Use this guide to determine baseline scope, which is the standard against which the performance of the project, its PM, and its team are measured.

Assessing Organizational Readiness

Use this guide to help you conduct an organizational readiness assessment, which determines whether your organization is properly prepared for the changes a project will likely cause.

Business Context Model

Use this guide to develop a business context model, which helps contextualize how a solution will "fit" into the existing structure of your organization.

Validating and Verifying Scope

Once scope is defined, it is important to review with stakeholders and subject matter experts to ensure the scope is accurate and approved.