Assignment: Create a Scope Statement for Your Case Study
Based on lecture materials for course thus far and the template provided on the next pages, create a scope statement for your individual case study project. As with earlier deliverables, use a business writing style where applicable, and do not assume the audience of this scope statement has read previous project documentation.
HINT: this scope statement incorporates requirements documentation, which means you will list the requirements (project, technical and any regulatory requirements) for your case study project in this document. As we saw in course week 3, writing requirements is challenging and could take some time! My hint is to start sooner rather than later.
As with your other written assignments, this assignment is to be completed individually.
Scope Statement: [Your Proposed Project Name Here]
(Note: the text in RED is designed to help you write your Scope Statement. Please remove all red text before submitting your assignment.)
1. Executive Summary
• Have you noticed how useful it is to have an Executive Summary of your project already written? A well-written Executive Summary is one that can be used in multiple documents as needed. As with other Executive Summaries, this summary should briefly describe the background and purpose of the project, and it's acceptable to reuse summary text from other deliverables.
• Because the Scope Statement is different from other scope documents in that it is a living document (it can be changed as project scope changes), it's helpful to identify the project's overall expected cost and delivery timeframe, to quickly provide readers a sense of the project's scale.
2. Business Requirements
• In this section, identify the business requirements this project was undertaken to satisfy. It is acceptable to restate the business requirements you identified in your Business Case (in fact, if your business requirements have changed, then the purpose of the project has changed, which isn't a good sign. Business requirements should remain fixed once a project has been approved for initiation.)
3. Solution Requirements, Prioritization, and Verification
• This section will contain a prioritized list of the project, technical, and any regulatory requirements associated with your project. Begin this section by briefly summarizing the requirement collection process used for your case study project, to give the requirements themselves some context. For example, you may want to briefly identify the collection tools used, some of the key stakeholders involved, and how requirement priorities were determined.
• Next, list the requirements for your case study (identify, at a minimum, 15 requirements.) For each requirement, include:
o The requirement sentence itself
o The type of requirement: project, technical, or regulatory
o Whether the requirement is a "must have", "should have", or "nice to have" requirement
o How you will determine the requirement has been fulfilled (what verification methods will be used)
• You may find using a table (or simple columns) useful for organizing your requirements list, but you are not required to do so.
4. Exclusions
• In this section, identify at least two items that are NOT included as part of this project.
5. Key Project Features
5.1 Project Constraints
• In this section, identify any conditions that limit project planning, such as the availability of certain important personnel or pieces of equipment; the amount of money available for the project; contractual limits; and/or predefined timelines.
5.2 Important Milestones
• In this section, identify any important delivery dates or interim delivery dates the project plan must include. For example, identify any required project reviews, inspections, testing milestones, or fiscal reporting dates (you are not limited to these examples.)
6. Project Assumptions and Risks (this section is not required for this assignment)
• Most scope statements include a section that identifies any assumptions and risks associated with the project thus far. Since you already identified risks for your case study project in your business case assignment in course week 1, you are not required to generate a new list of risks for this scope statement assignment.
This section has been included with this scope statement simply to show you it is normally a part of the scope statement, to give you a complete scope statement template for potential use outside this class.
7. Approvals
• This final section provides space for actual signatures, to formally indicate approval of the requirements, priorities, acceptance criteria, and exclusions identified. Formal approval of the scope statement allows the project team to use this document to begin detailed project planning, so it's important this document indicates agreement from any stakeholder responsible for overseeing any part of this project.
• In this section, create an area for key stakeholders to sign this document.
For your case study, who do you believe should sign this document? Be sure to also identify the signator's name, role, and the date the document was signed.