CDC UNIFIED PROCESS
PRACTICES GUIDE
PROJECT SCOPE PLANNING
UP Version: 12/31/07 Page 1 of 4
Purpose
The purpose of this document is to provide guidance on the practice of Project Scope Planning and to
describe the practice overview, requirements, best practices, activities, and key terms related to these
requirements. In addition, templates relevant to this practice are provided at the end of this guide.
Practice Overview
Each project’s product and/or service is unique and requires its own careful balance of practices,
processes, tools and techniques, etc. to ensure the required work is completed as agreed upon by key
project stakeholders. The sum of these along with the product and/or service to be delivered by the
project is known as the project’s scope. Getting key parties to agree upon what is the scope of the
project’s work is known as project scope planning.
The practice of project scope planning is a key management practice for planning and delivering projects
successfully. Project scope includes high level features or capabilities that the business team has
committed to delivering to a customer as well as those they have not committed to delivering. Project
scope is often defined by executive sponsor, steering committee, project sponsor, and the project’s
customer with input from other appropriate stakeholders.
Understanding and analyzing who project stakeholders are is an important early step in the scope
planning process. Project stakeholders are persons and/or organizations such as customers, sponsors,
the public, etc. that are actively involved in the project, whose interests may be affected by the project, or
who exert influence over the project and/or its deliverables.
Diligent scope planning works toward ensuring that key project stakeholders agree upon the project work
to be accomplished. Achieving this agreement is facilitated through a process of progressively elaborating
and documenting project work and communicating with project stakeholders. This process forms the
basis for an agreement between the project team and the customer by relating the work of the project to
the project's objectives and ensuring that the project includes all of the work required, and only the work
required to meet the agreed upon project objectives. At a minimum the scope planning process should
consider:
• Project justification – Defining the business need that the project was undertaken to address.
Such as, a customer request, market demand, etc.
• Product description – Documenting the relationship between the created product and/or service
and the business need the project was undertaken to address.
• Project objective – Outlining criteria the project needs to meet for it to be considered a success.
This includes measures of cost, quality, schedule, etc. to meet the business needs behind why
the project was chartered.
Four primary actions are conducted throughout the scope planning process:
1. Scope Planning – Creating a project scope management plan that documents how the project
scope will be defined, verified, controlled, and how the work breakdown structure (WBS) will be
created and defined.
2. Scope Definition – Developing a detailed project scope statement as the basis for future project
decisions.
3. Scope Verification – Formalizing a plan for acceptance of the completed project deliverables.
4. Scope Control – Establishing a mechanism for controlling changes to the project scope.
Scope Planning
The foundation for scope planning is a detailed project scope statement derived from the preliminary
scope statement documented within the project charter and business case documents. Using a
detailed scope statement as a foundation, the scope management planning process outlines the
