The Hard Question

It may be necessary to reduce scope by as much as a factor of two.

Clearly, in order for the project team to have any hope of success, scope must be managed before and during the development effort. Given the typical scenario, however, the task is daunting: For if we truly begin the development effort with an expectation of 200 percent scope, it will be necessary to reduce the project scope by as much as a factor of two in order to have any chance of success .

The team's dilemma in addressing this problem leads to perhaps the toughest question faced by the team: How does one manage to reduce scope and keep the customers happy? Well, all is not lost. We'll cover ways to deal with this issue in the following sections.