- The scope of the project is all about translating the requirements into outputs for your chosen solution. The scope of a project should be recorded at a high level in the business case to help with the investment appraisal. The scope will need to take into account things like budget, timescale, objectives, benefits and risk, but it needs to be communicated in the language of deliverables, that is outputs. The scope should also analyze what the project won't achieve, things that are beyond the scope of the project. In this video, we'll dive into the importance of proper scope management, product and work breakdown structures, cost breakdown structures, the responsibility assignment matrix and the benefits of breakdown structures. The first and main reason you need to clearly define scope is that it'll help your stakeholders to understand and agree with the project objectives, which in turn will help you to secure realistic budget and schedule. Scope management is also essential to planning, monitoring, controlling and handing over your project. In projects with a linear life cycle, you define the baseline scope through breakdown structures. A baseline is a reference level from which you'll monitor and control the project. In intuitive life cycles, you'll prioritize the must have requirements in user stories and translate them into target scope of work that you want to achieve in a fixed timeframe, a sprint. You might change your scope in later iterations based on experience and feedback. There are a few typical breakdown structures. Let's go through each in a little detail. A product breakdown structure or PBS is a hierarchical decomposition of all the deliverables that a project will create, the lowest level being a deliverable. A work breakdown structure or WBS is a hierarchical decomposition of all the work activities that the project will do, the lowest level being a work package. A cost breakdown structure is the labor or non-labor resources needed to complete the work. You can also use an organizational breakdown structure or OBS to show the structure of the project and communication and reporting links. If you combine this with the work breakdown structure, you get a responsibility assignment matrix or Ram. You can use this ram to help define who is responsible for each of the projects deliverables or work packages, I.e, who does what. Last up in this video, let's talk about some of the benefits of breakdown structures. By using them, you can form the basis of effective planning and control for more accurate budgeting. You can also create a common understanding of the scope of the project, clarify what's in or out of scope, illustrate trade offs, highlight risk and help with estimating through analytics. All in all then, break down structures are at the heart of scope management. And that's it for this video. Proper scope management will make sure that your project has a good chance of success because you'll have the right budget and timeframe to deliver it. You can also use breakdowns structures to highlight what the deliverables are, who's doing the work and what the costs are, as well as who's responsible for what.