What’s a project scope, and how do you write one?

As you gear up for your next project, it's crucial to set off on the right foot by crafting a roadmap for your success. Whether you're gunning for that well-deserved promotion or aiming to foster better collaboration with your boss or coworkers, this is a key moment to flex your leadership skills and unite everyone under a common goal.

However, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement and rush ahead, inadvertently overlooking crucial details during the planning phase. Sometimes, that eagerness to make progress can undermine the importance of thorough preparation.

Amidst this hustle, a pivotal aspect of project planning can keep you grounded: your project scope. Defining scope encourages you to visualize the entire lifecycle of your project and narrow your team’s focus to what’s strictly necessary. Let’s explore how to use this project management step to assess the feasibility of your goals and make sure you give all the details their due diligence.

What’s a project’s scope? Scope statement and project scope definitions 

Project scope is used in project planning to define the main deliverables, goals, costs, and deadlines you need to complete a project. Defining these details helps you create a clear action plan according to your timeline and budgeting constraints.

These individual details collectively form the scope statement, which acts as a valuable reference for team members and project managers, offering them a clear understanding of their responsibilities and the anticipated outcomes.

Depending on the complexity of your project, you may need to distribute this document across departments to ensure everyone is on the same page. For example, if you’re working on a sneaker launch promotion, you want to align with the photography, product, and marketing teams to confirm all objectives can be met by the launch date.

6 benefits of defining project scope in the early stages

No matter your project’s size and how many stakeholders are involved, proper planning is crucial to ensure everything goes according to your vision.

Although it’s exciting to start a new project and dive in as soon as possible, what saves you time in the beginning often comes back around. Here are seven benefits of defining your project’s scope in the early stages of project planning:

1. Outlines the project’s objectives and the metrics for success
2. Defines a reasonable timeframe for achieving the project’s objectives
3. Ensures all tasks are within the designated budget
4. Reduces the risk of scope creep (when project deliverables balloon throughout the project)
5. Ensures all teams have an understanding of the project’s requirements
6. Manages and sets expectations for the boundaries of the project
7. Clarifies the delegation and ownership process down the line

How to define the scope of a project 

According to the Project Management Institute, “ambiguous or unrefined scope definition” is the number one cause of scope creep. In other words, without a clear scope, you risk wasting time and money on work that doesn’t benefit your end goal. 

Outlining your project scope lays the groundwork for your project’s success by flagging the necessary milestones and making the right exclusions. Here are eight steps to follow when creating a project scope statement:

1. Outline project objectives

Your project’s objectives are the outcomes you want to achieve by its completion date. Outlining these objectives gives purpose and direction to the entire initiative — and your team. Without clear, realistic goals, your project is more susceptible to scope creep and can branch off to include deliverables or details that aren’t necessary.

2. Create a resource management plan

In scope project management, resources can refer to budgets, inventory, and human bandwidth. A resource management plan outlines the available resources and how you intend to use them throughout the project. Knowing what resources are available from the beginning empowers you to create a reasonable timeline, define project boundaries, and gauge the feasibility of the project’s final outcome.

3. Collect additional project requirements

Before drafting your statement, you should collect and define any additional requirements that may influence your project’s scope. This could include external factors such as client deadlines or company policy. For example, if you’re a software engineer working on a sensitive company project, your work may require additional security requirements, such as encryption.

4. Draft your project scope statement

Once you’ve noted your goals and objectives and collected additional project requirements, it’s time to draft your project scope statement. Your statement should outline your project’s intended outcomes and the work your team will cover within the defined timeline.

5. Acquire approval from key stakeholders

Before running with your project scope statement and introducing it to the rest of your team, make sure to receive a sign-off from key stakeholders. This allows you to gain an outsider’s opinion on your project’s deliverables and make any necessary changes to ensure the client or C-suite is happy. This is especially important when answering to a higher-up within your organization who approves your budget and resources.

6. Create a change control process

When working on large projects, deliverables, resources, and timelines often need to be adjusted as your team makes progress. Maybe funding fell through for the project budget and the scope of the project needs to be changed, or perhaps a product’s design didn’t meet expectations and needs to be redeveloped.

If you’re managing a complex project with multiple stakeholders, creating a change control process can help you reduce the risk of scope creep while promoting adaptability. A change control process is a predetermined procedure team leaders must go through before making changes to the project scope.

This process requires the project team to submit change requests to important stakeholders for approval each time they’d like to alter the content of their work.

7. Share the project scope statement with the team

Once your key stakeholders have reviewed the project scope statement and you’ve developed a proper change control process, it’s time to share the statement with your team. During this phase, team members can ask questions and discuss any concerns about the project’s progression or deliverables.

Often, individual contributors have the best insight into what is and isn’t achievable given their resources and skills.

8. Review the project scope statement during the project

Your project scope statement is more than a starting point for your project — it’s a great reference to review while conducting your work. Looking over the statement during each stage ensures you follow the correct order of operations while working on the initiative.

And as a manager, it can help you assess whether each team member is performing and actively contributing to the project’s success.

Project scope planning and management

Although project scope statements lay the foundation for staying on track, unexpected changes and updates are part of the management process. It’s the project manager’s responsibility to evaluate possible modifications and document any changes made to the project’s scope.

When new information and opportunities arise, you must decide whether they contribute to the project's scope or deviate from achieving your intended objectives.

These change management processes grant the flexibility to make beneficial tweaks to workflow and resource management while remaining true to your project’s goals. Remember to stay open-minded when receiving ideas from your stakeholders and team members, as they may share valuable insight on how to improve your processes and the overall outcome of your project.

Project scope examples

Knowing which components to include in your project scope statement and seeing an example in action are two very different things. Here are two templates for inspiration when creating your own statement:

Example 1: project scope statement for a product launch

If you’re a small designer launching a new sneaker, your project scope statement may look like this:

Project objective: to create a stylish, on-trend platform sneaker to launch in the spring/summer collection that caters to Gen Z and boosts overall brand recognition.

Resources

• Footwear design team (10 people) available for 30 hours of work per week per person
• Shoemakers (40 people) available for 30 hours of work per week per person
• Photography team (8 people) available for 30 hours of work per week per person for two weeks
• Marketing team (5 people) available for 30 hours of work per week per person
• Graphic designers (5 people) available for 25 hours of work per week per person for two weeks

Additional requirements

• The new sneaker needs to be designed and tested by January to go to market in the spring/summer collection

Project roadmap and timeline

• August 15: Give brief to the footwear design team and begin brainstorming new sneaker design
• August 22: Present the first round of ideas to the footwear design team
• August 25: Choose the top three designs to develop further
• September 8: Present new renditions of the top three designs to the footwear design team
• September 13: Determine the final design with the footwear design team
• September 15: Make minor design adjustments before passing them along to the shoemaking team
• September 20: Begin the manufacturing process with the shoemaking team
• September 29: Present the first draft of the final shoe design
• October 3: Order supplies necessary to refine the shoe design
• October 17: Make a second draft of the final shoe design
• October 20: Test the sneaker prototype
• October 31: Make necessary changes to the final design
• November 10: Re-test the sneaker design
• November 24: Begin manufacturing a small batch of the final sneaker design
• December 12: Take product and content photos of the new design
• December 13: Begin retouching product photos
• December 20: Finalize marketing materials with new product photos
• January 2: Launch new sneaker design on the company website and social media platforms

Example 2: project scope statement for redesigning a company website

If you’re in charge of organizing a new website launch, your project scope statement could look like this:

Project objective: to redesign the company website to fit the new branding material and improve customer experience.

Resources

• Web developer available for 25 hours of work per week
• Art director available for 30 hours of work per week
• Photography team (4 people) available for 10 hours of work per week
• Content writers (2 people) available for 30 hours of work per week
• Marketing team (3 people) available for 6 hours of ad hoc work per week

Additional requirements

• The website needs to be launched by October 3, before the product launch on October 10

Project roadmap and timeline

• August 18: Begin creating a website template for Art Director’s approval
• August 21: Have the photography team take content photos for the website
• August 22: Give content writers outlines for new website copy
• August 29: Review and upload new images onto the website template
• September 5: Have the marketing team review the writer’s written copy
• September 8: Approve and upload written content
• September 13: Have art direction review the website and offer recommendations
• September 15: Begin implementing recommendations
• September 20: Perform quality control on website design and new content
• September 29: Launch new website

Don’t skip the scope

Defining the project scope is an important step in project management that points you and your team in the right direction. Before embarking on your next venture, create objectives, compile resources, and note project requirements to better understand how your initiative will run.

By laying this groundwork before kicking off work, you can account for any barriers and gauge your project’s potential for success more accurately.