Project Management: Scope, Factors and Importance

This article discusses project scope, factors affecting it, and the importance of project visibility, accountability, and shared ownership in project management. It also includes a sample work breakdown structure for a food delivery app development project. The subject is project management and the course code and college/university are not mentioned.

Running Head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Project Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University

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Answer to Question 1.
Project scope is defined as a limit or boundary within which the project must exist in
order to maintain feasibility and also fulfill the target objectives set during the planning of the
project. A scope is generally defined during the planning of the project so that the project does
not move into unwanted requirements that will also not be feasible for the amount of funds and
time estimated (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017). However, as per the general opinion of the project
management researchers, recording the scope of the project sometimes poses challenges for
project stakeholders and also presents some opportunities. The main challenge that is posed to
the stakeholders is that the scope limits the actions of stakeholders in the project. When a project
is planned, different stakeholders have different ideas regarding their duties and the execution of
the project. However, with the recording of the project scope, the stakeholders have to change
ideas and significantly limit their course of action so that the project does not move out of scope
and because unfeasible in terms of funds, schedule and fulfillment of the initial goals and
objectives (Turner 2014). Again, there are some opportunities arising from the recording of
project scope. The main opportunity is that the project scope provides the stakeholders with well
defined roles and project roadmap that they can follow without doubt in order to deliver the
project within pre-specified attributes.
Although the project scope is a record of the limit or boundary of a project, there are a
number of other factors that must be determined before determining the scope of the project.
Project managers and other stakeholders must ensure these factors are appropriately and
accurately determined or else the project scope will also become inaccurate that will ultimately

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result in failure of the entire project (Fleming and Koppelman 2016). Some of the factors falling
under this category are discussed as follows.
Inclusions – Inclusions are the project attributes or outputs that are included within the
project i.e. must be executed and delivered during the execution of the project. These must be
determined in order to find the attributes that will remain within the limits of the scope.
Exclusions – Exclusions are project attributes or outputs that are excluded from the
project i.e. these attributes will not be attended or delivered during the course of the project.
Deliverables – Deliverables are the outputs that are to be completed and fulfilled within
the course of the project. The deliverables are determined by adding the inclusions in the project
activity list as well as removing the exclusions from the same (Harrison and Lock 2017).
Although there is one final deliverable of the project, there may be several deliverables that must
be met at various stages of the project.
Work Breakdown Structure – The work breakdown structure is a representation of
various work packages that are associated with the project and is mainly done by dividing the
project into several phases and allocating the work packages in respective project phases. A
sample work breakdown structure is shown in the following diagram.

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Figure 1: Sample WBS for a Food Delivery App Development
(Source: Created by Author)
The project manager needs to monitor and ensure these factors are fulfilled during project
planning phase before recording the overall scope of the project.
Answer to Question 2.
Regardless the fact regarding how projects are conceived, planned, delivered and
completed, it is much needed to ensure that the project management process followed delivers
project visibility, accountability and shared ownership. These factors are explained as follows.
Project Visibility – Project visibility is a general but popular term in project management.
It literally means visibility i.e. the stakeholders and the higher management can easily visualize

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the existing state of the project and what is being done to execute the project (Marchewka 2014).
It is extremely important to maintain the visibility of the project such that the project can be
monitored by the higher management who can introduce some changes in the project if it is
required or pause the progress of the project if the management finds that the project is gradually
moving out of scope. Without the project visibility, the project managers will be further
empowered but the management or authority will not be able to control the project even during
critical points.
Project Accountability – Accountability or responsibility is also a critical factor
responsible for ensuring the success of a project. In this case, accountability refers to the
responsibility of the stakeholders in the project and responsibility not only includes just the roles
of the stakeholders defined during the planning of the project (Walker 2015). Responsibility also
means taking active role in ensuring project success as well as taking blame for own faults rather
than pointing other’s mistakes for an issue or problem. Very often it is seen that due to
mishandling of a project, the stakeholders start to blame each other and create a chaos that
affects the project as well as the project organization negatively. Hence, project accountability
must be maintained from the start of the project till the delivery of the predetermined project
outcome.
Shared Ownership – In a project management team, there is a project manager who sits
on top of the structure and various other stakeholders and other personnel work under the project
manager. The project manager is also entitled with the responsibility of planning, monitoring,
managing, controlling and monitoring of the entire project (Nicholas and Steyn 2017). Now,
there are two different situations for two different outcomes arising in this context – project
success and project failure. The most common scene noticed in the projects is that during project

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success, the project manager takes all the responsibility and ownership of success whereas during
project failure, he passes the blame on the workers and other stakeholders working under him.
This creates a negative environment and immediately decreases the trust of the workers on the
project manager (Heagney 2016). The general opinion of the researchers is that shared ownership
is the most viable solution to the problem i.e. while the success will be shared by all the
stakeholders and not only the project manager, the blame will also be shared by the entire team
and solutions for the failure will be found the entire team together.

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References
Fleming, Q.W. and Koppelman, J.M., 2016, December. Earned value project management.
Project Management Institute.
Harrison, F. and Lock, D., 2017. Advanced project management: a structured approach.
Routledge.
Heagney, J., 2016. Fundamentals of project management. Amacom.
Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H.R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning,
scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Marchewka, J.T., 2014. Information technology project management. John Wiley & Sons.
Nicholas, J.M. and Steyn, H., 2017. Project management for engineering, business and
technology. Routledge.
Turner, J.R., 2014. Handbook of project-based management(Vol. 92). New York, NY: McGraw-
hill.
Walker, A., 2015. Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.