Scope and cost

Scope is a critical factor in project management. Managing scope creep is one of the project manager's and sponsor's biggest tasks, and a major theme of this book. Stakeholders will always tend to want scope increases or scope changes. This often arises not through deliberate intention, but as a result of improved understanding of the project and its issues, and from people refining or adjusting their expectations. The problem for the project manager is to steer a middle course between on the one hand appearing to say 'no' to every request, and on the other saying 'yes' too readily and then discovering later in the project that there is not enough time or resource to deliver on the additional commitment.

There is only one thing to do in this situation: discuss the requested scope change with the sponsor and project team to determine the likely cost impact, then go back to the person who wants the request and explain the cost ramifications. The type of response is initially 'Let me go away and determine the ramifications of that', after which you discuss with the sponsor and team, so that you can go back and say 'If we made such-and-such a change to the project, the cost ramifications would be $X,000 plus a delay of Y month'. You will of course need to have supporting detail to back up your argument. Although project managers often do not need to know how to estimate costs for an entire project, they should be able to make or supervise others making this kind of revised cost estimate. (The approach outlined in this paragraph is important for both real life and the PMI exams.)

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