Project Scope Statement
Project Scope Statement
Order Instructions:
Course Project Part 2—Due Week 4
In project Part 2, we create a schedule and accurate budget for your project. You need to focus on detailed cost estimating, scheduling, and cost justification. Estimating includes specific assumptions made during the estimating process, as well as quantities, unit prices, hourly rates for tasks, and accumulated totals. You must justify all of your costs; this includes direct, indirect, variable, fixed, and overhead.
The CP-2 Project Proposal will be structured with the following sections.
•Cover page including assignment, project title, course, and student contact information
•Executive summary summarizing the content from the entire document with quantifiable highlights, such as overall cost, duration, and so on
•Project scope statement describing the project
•Resource loaded WBS and schedule with proper grouping, indenting, and coding for approximately 25 to 40 line items. This also needs to include a work package, deliverables, and activities, activity relationships, activity durations, and activity resources.
•Cost estimates for each activity. Capital cost estimates should include building, franchise fees, equipment, and so on, if required for your project.
•Cost assumptions including a list of assumptions made when deriving your estimates
NOTE: Each section should include the detail as described above, along with a proper discussion about the included data as well as the project manager’s analysis and interpretation of the information.
Submission Requirements
•The assignment should be submitted as two files: one MS Word file for the scope statement and documentation excerpt for the WBS; and one MS Project file containing the project WBS, schedule, resource loading, and budget information.
•CP-2 must include a cover page.
•As a guide, the body of CP-2 should be between five and 10 pages in length (i.e., not including cover page, appendix, and MS Project file).
SAMPLE ANSWER
Executive Summary
The proposed project is aimed at developing software that would centralize the operations of Sparkle Enterprises Limited onto a single management platform for the purpose of improving resource allocation, operations management, and prioritization of the organization’s different operations/programs. Successful execution of the proposed project would help to significantly reduce the organization’s schedule delays and cost overruns. This project would be carried out over a period of 6 months starting January 16, 2016 and completing it on June 9 2016 at a cost of $172,000. One of the deliverables is new software that is tested and fully operational free of errors and satisfies the stipulated specifications.
Course Project Part 2
Project Scope Statement
Project scope, as Schmidt (2011) pointed out, is the part of project planning in which a listing of exact project deliverables, goals, deadlines, costs and tasks are determined and documented. The documentation of a project’s scope defines the project’s boundaries, explains the roles of every member of the project team and spells out the procedures for how the finished work would be validated and approved (Patanakul & Shenhar, 2012). The document might be called the scope statement. The proposed project is aimed at developing software that would centralize the operations of Sparkle Enterprises Limited onto a single management platform for the purpose of improving resource allocation, operations management, and prioritization of the organization’s different operations/programs. All the company operations would be managed in this new software.
In the project, new software would be designed, developed, tested and implemented at Sparkle Enterprises Limited that would allow the company to track its operations and effectively manage all current programs, future programs and/or operations in its portfolio. By developing and implementing the new software, Sparkle Enterprises Limited would have a better leverage on its limited resources through prioritization of operations, efficient allocation of resources, and provision of proactive management oversight which is helpful in the identification and mitigation of risks prior to their adverse impact on operations. Therefore, successful execution of the proposed project would help to significantly reduce the company’s schedule delays as well as cost overruns. Relevant permissions and access would be granted to the administrator or a particular designated individual who will be in charge of updating, managing, and viewing programs and operations. All programs and operations would entail integration of a virtual dashboard including the important metrics for the provision of consistency in the methodology of measuring the performance of the programs and operations. Programs and operations dashboards will display budget data, schedules, assigned resources, potential risks, in addition to attained milestones.
On the whole, the project comprises all the work that pertains to planning, designing, developing/programming, implementing and installing the new software for Sparkle Enterprises Limited. This would entail gathering functional requirements for the software and obtaining input from the company’s departments and users of the system, server configuration, technical and conceptual design and coding work, testing, troubleshooting, and implementation of the new software across the company. The project scope will also include training and/or operational manuals as well as troubleshooting guides. Following successful completion and implementation of the proposed project at Sparkles Enterprises Limited, the expected deliverables include the following:
- Deliverable 1: New software that is tested and fully operational free of errors and meet the stipulated specifications whose descriptions are in the Project Scope Description based on the functional requirements.
- Deliverable 2: New tested and operational software template allowing users to enter software metrics and data consistently.
- Deliverable 3: A complete and comprehensive user’s manual providing stepwise instructions on the usage of the software.
- Deliverable 4: A complete as well as comprehensive troubleshooting guide providing corrective steps or measures to the software users.
With regard to cost and deadline, the proposed project would be carried out for a period of 6 months starting January 16, 2016 and completing it on June 9 2016 at a cost of $172,000.
The table below shows the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders and members of the project team:
| Name | Designation | Responsibilities |
| James Daniels | Sponsor | · Approving or denying requests for scope change as appropriate
· Evaluating requests for scope change need · Accepting project deliverables |
| Margret Daniels | Project Manager | · Measuring and verifying project scope
· Facilitating requests for scope change · Facilitating the assessments of requests for scope change impact · Organizing and facilitating meetings for scheduled change control · Communicating outcomes of requests for scope change · Updating project documents after all scope changes are approved |
| Mary Roberts | Steering Committee | · Providing assistance to resolve issues arising from the project scope that are beyond the jurisdiction of the project manager
· Monitoring the progress of the project and providing necessary support and tools especially when project milestones are in jeopardized. |
| Bob Williams | Team Lead | · Measuring and verifying project scope
· Validating requests for the project scope change · Participating in assessing requests for scope change impact · Communicating outcomes of requests for scope change to the team · Facilitating change review process at team level |
| Dave Jacobs | Team Member | · Participating in the definition of change resolutions
· Evaluating the need for changing the scope and subsequently communicating them to the project manager appropriately |
| Tom Smith | Team Member | · Participating in the definition of change resolutions
· Evaluating the need for changing the scope and subsequently communicating them to the project manager appropriately |
Resource loaded Work Breakdown Structure and schedule
A Work Breakdown Structure is essentially understood as a chart wherein the crucial work elements, commonly referred to as tasks, of the project are shown to illustrate how they relate to each other and to the entire project altogether (Killen et al., 2012). It is worth mentioning that the Work Breakdown Structure’s graphical nature helps the project manager in predicting outcomes basing upon different scenarios, which could ensure that the best possible decisions are made with regard to whether or not to adopt suggested procedures (Colber, 2014).
For the proposed project, the Work Breakdown Structure is illustrated in the chart below:
The resources required to complete the project effectively comprise human resources including the project manager, programmers and system analyst; financial resources; and computer hardware resources such as computers, servers, a router, cables, backup devices, disk storage devices, and universal power supplies (UPSs).
Schedule
| Task Name | Duration | Start | Finish | |
| 1 | Scope | 107 days | 1/18/2016 | 1/29/2016 |
| 2 | Determining project scope | 1 day | 1/30/2016 | 1/30/2016 |
| 3 | Secure project sponsorship | 2 days | 1/31/20116 | 2/1/2016 |
| 4 | Order preliminary resources | 2 days | 2/2/2016 | 2/3/2016 |
| 5 | Secure core resources | 5 days | 2/4/2016 | 2/10/2016 |
| 6 | Scope complete | 0 days | 2/10/2016 | 2/10/2016 |
| 7 | Analysis of software requirements | 20 days | 2/11/2016 | 3/9/2016 |
| 8 | Conduct analysis needs | 2 days | 2/11/2016 | 2/12/2016 |
| 9 | Draft preliminary software requirements | 2 days | 2/13/2016 | 2/15/2016 |
| 10 | Develop preliminary budget | 2 days | 2/16/2016 | 2/17/2016 |
| 11 | Review software specifications/budget with members of the project team | 1 day | 2/18/2016 | 2/18/2016 |
| 12 | Integrating feedback | 1 day | 2/19/2016 | 2/19/2016 |
| 13 | Develop delivery deadline | 4 days | 2/20/2016 | 2/24/2016 |
| 14 | Obtain approval to proceed | 5 days | 2/25/2016 | 3/2/2016 |
| 15 | Secure the required resources | 3 days | 3/3/2016 | 3/7/2016 |
| 16 | Analysis complete | 0 days | 3/8/2016 | 3/8/2016 |
| 17 | Design | 30 days | 9/3/2016 | 4/19/2016 |
| 18 | Review preliminary software specifications | 2 days | 3/9/2016 | 3/10/2016 |
| 19 | Develop functional requirements | 3 days | 3/11/2016 | 3/15/2016 |
| 20 | Develop prototypes | 14 days | 3/16/2016 | 4/4/2016 |
| 21 | Review functional requirements | 2 days | 4/5/2016 | 4/6/2016 |
| 22 | Incorporate feedback | 8 days | 4/7/2016 | 4/18/2016 |
| 23 | Design complete | 0 days | 4/18/2016 | 4/16/2016 |
| 24 | Development | 35 days | 4/19/2016 | 6/6/2016 |
| 25 | Review functional specifications | 3 days | 4/18/2016 | 4/21/2016 |
| 26 | Identify design parameters | 10 days | 4/22/2016 | 5/5/2016 |
| 27 | Implement prototypes | 22 days | 5/6/2016 | 6/6/2016 |
| 28 | Development complete | 0 days | 6/6/2016 | 6/6/2016 |
| 29 | Testing the new software | 8 days | 6/7/2016 | 6/16/2016 |
| 30 | Training | 4 days | 6/17/2016 | 6/22/2016 |
As illustrated in the schedule above, the entire project would last a total of 6 months. The human resources who would be required to ensure effective completion of the project are as follows: 1 project manager; 1 team leader who will also act as the supervisor; 5 software developers/software designers/analysts who are the team members. Therefore, the entire workforce would comprise only 7 personnel.
Cost estimates for every activity
Developing an effective budget for a software development project is often contingent on developing all-inclusive software engineering schedule and cost models with the use of industry-standard estimation methods. Pinto (2010) pointed out that to accurately determine the budget for a software development project, it is important to first identify both the scope and type of the software product being developed by the project team. Developing software that has complex features and benefits would certainly increase the amount of time needed for testing. It also increases the costs linked to production of the software.
With regard to the financial resources needed for the current project, the total estimated budget is $172,000. This amount is broken down as follows:
| Ref. | Project Expenditures | Quantity/units/days | Rate per unit ($) | Total ($) |
| 1 | Hardware costs | |||
| 1.1 | Computers | 6 | $500 | $3,000 |
| 1.2 | Servers | 2 | $3,500 | $7,000 |
| 1.3 | Backup devices | 3 | $1,500 | $4,500 |
| 1.4 | Disk storage | 2 | $300 | $600 |
| 1.5 | Universal Power Supply (UPS) | 1 | $450 | $450 |
| 1.6 | Additional processing services which could be permanent or temporary for instance through cloud services | 1 | $1,000 | 1,000 |
| 1.7 | Router | 1 | $1,000 | $1,000 |
| 1.8 | Cabling / cables | 7 | $200 | $1,400 |
| $18,950 | ||||
| 2 | Personnel | |||
| 2.1 | Project manager | 1 | $13,800 | $13,800 |
| 2.2 | Team leader | 1 | $12,000 | $12,000 |
| 2.3 | Software developers, software designers, analyst making up the project team members | 5 | $13,800 | $69,000 |
| $94,800 | ||||
| 3 | Software requirements analysis | 20 days | $500 | $10,000 |
| 4 | Software design | 30 days | $500 | $15,000 |
| 5 | Software development and programming | 20 days | $500 | $10,000 |
| 6 | Software testing and installation | 35 days | $350 | $12,250 |
| 7 | Security application for the software | 1 antivirus software and firewall | $1000 | $1,000 |
| 8 | Training | 1 day | $5,000 | $5,000 |
| 9 | Contingency | N/A | $5,000 | $5,000 |
| $58,250 | ||||
| Total | $172,000 | |||
Cost assumptions
This current project would be carried over a period of 6 months. When deriving the cost estimates illustrated above, the cost assumptions that were made include the following:
- The personnel would be paid not on an hourly rate, but on a monthly rate for a period of 6 months. For instance, the cost of employing project manager is $2,300 per month which adds up to $13,800 for the 6-month period, and that of employing one team leader is $2,000 per month amounting to $12,000 for six months.
- Once the system has been completed successfully and deployed at Sparkles Enterprises Limited, a firewall and/or antivirus software would be installed, which would cost an estimated $1,000. This would help in protecting the new system against any malicious software from outside the organization.
- The charges for software requirements, software design, software development/programming, as well as software testing and installation are essentially the funds which the project team members would incur in the course of the project. They are not part of the personnel fees.
- The contingency funds amounting to $5,000 as shown in the budget is reserved for responding to any risks that are identified.
- Indirect costs are the charges and other overheads which are shared out across different departments or many activities such as computers.
- Direct costs are the expenditures that are exclusive to this particular project and consist of the resources that are directly involved in delivering the work and managing it (Wysocki, 2013). The following charges are examples of direct costs for this project: charges for software requirements, software design, software development/programming, software testing and installation, and training.
- Fixed costs do not change in spite of how much output is attained for instance cost of the building, whereas variable costs change depending on the amount of resource that is utilized, for instance wages for the personnel involved in the project (Kendrik, 2013). If the duration of the project increases to 7 or more months, then the salaries would also increase.
References
Colber, V. (2014). Work Breakdown Structure. Moraga, CA. Bright ideas and concepts.
Kendrick, T. (2013). The Project Management Tool Kit: 100 Tips and Techniques for Getting the Job Done Right, (3rd ed.). New York, NY: AMACOM Books.
Killen, C. P., Jugdev, K., Drouin, N., & Petit, Y. (2012). Advancing project and portfolio management research: Applying strategic management theories. International Journal Of Project Management, 30(5), 525-538. doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2011.12.004
Patanakul, P., & Shenhar, A. J. (2012). What project strategy really is: The fundamental building block in strategic project management. Project Management Journal, 43(1), 4-20. doi:10.1002/pmj.20282
Pinto, J. K. (2010). Project Management: Achieving competitive advantage (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Prentice Hall.
Schmidt, T. (2011). Strategic Project Management Made Simple : Practical Tools for Leaders and Teams. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons
Wysocki, R. K. (2013). Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme, (11th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
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