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Review of Article: Understanding The Influence of Poor Scope Management Affecting The Successful of an IT Project
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Topic: Why project scope management is important in IT Projects
Project scope is one of the most important parts of any project success. The project manager and team members need to define the objectives of the project in a clear and concise way (Hughes & Cotterell, 2011). Because lack of scope is sometimes considered responsible for the failure of several IT projects. Hence, project managers, as part of their leadership, consider management of project scope very seriously. As per PMBoK guide, project scope management involves the process required to ensure the project has work required that is relevant (A guide to the project management body of knowledge, 2017). Several methods are involved in project scope management, e.g., scope plan, stakeholder requirement collection, work breakdown structure, as well as scope validation and control.
However, currently, project managers have found IT project failures due to lack of scope and objectives. The journal article research establishes that 50-80 per cent of IT projects do not succeed due to reduced scope, time and cost. Further, time and cost are affected due to a change in project scope. Authors Adam and Danaparamita (2016) researched with the help of project managers as participants. Furthermore, project failure is due to a lack of understanding in collecting requirements and unrealistic client expectations for system development. Thus, these problems create a huge loss for the project manager as well as team members, and as a result, the IT project fails.
Several factors are responsible that lead to reduced project scope and IT management failure. Project Managers claim in the research that unrealistic project scope from the client within available resources is one factor — the demands which are unable to fulfil in the software system and are too conceptual. Secondly, there is no management of scope creep whenever project scope is extended. Another factor for failure is the implementation of new technologies that are not even applied before. Lastly, the lack of business activities and organisational issues are another key factors. Therefore, poor project scope leads the companies into overall project failures.
Authors Adam & Danaparamita (2016, pp. 125) in their research, determine how project failure can be overcome and gather factors of project failures one-by-one for the future. This research was beneficial to gather how project scope management is necessary for project managers, team members and most importantly, the IT industry itself. What was the purpose of this research and how it was executed? To answer this question; there were 100 participants from 36 companies in Jakarta, Indonesia and withhold different positions in IT like project managers, system analyst, business analyst, and software developer. With the help of this research, people can understand how reduced project scope affect an IT project.
Project failure occurs when project requirements are not meet as per client’s demand. Furthermore, the project scope is considered responsible for project management performance. It has been establishing that project success is mostly based on budget, schedule and requirements goals (Serra, & Kunc, 2015). Hence, three criteria or triple constraints like cost goal, time goal and scope goal are connected with each other (Adam and Danaparamita, 2016, pp. 125). These are interlinked with each other and dependent on each other. Authors Russell, ferdehirt, & Nelson (2018) interrelate their connection with each other for project failure. Whenever, project scope changes, cost also goes up and down for adjusting new software and hardware requirements. Whereas, if the cost budget has a slight shift, then a schedule of the project extends on an individual level. As a result, the project scope has an adverse impact and product lower quality software system disappointing clients.
Further, research study defines that project scope is indirectly affected due to unrealistic demands from the client. The unrealistic expectation by client demands for specific changes that occur. The IT change is determined due to the overcast and overtime schedule in the project. Due to such connection, project failures in the IT industry is seen. Therefore, the authors conclude that an unrealistic approach to a specific system development indirectly responsible for project failure. This situation gets out of control from the project manager’s hands. Additionally, developers cannot make changes in the system due to demands which cannot be fulfilled. Henceforth, project scope management has become a necessity to achieve success.
This article highlights some of the learnings as a project manager. The managers must adhere to project scope management techniques. Without a proper project scope, there is no reason to proceed. In IT projects, leaders fail to gather what is the client’s basic necessity. This affects other constraints, such as cost budget and task schedule structure. As a result, poor quality product is offered to the customer from the companies. However, how can scope management is handled is another important aspect that should be learned. This study was essential as it illustrates how project success depends on proper planning. Not only scope; however, other elements should also be considered. First, project managers need to be open enough to understand what the customer’s requirement is. Second, if demand is unrealistic that managers should tackle such issues cautiously, third, project scope management techniques must be utilized properly.
There are several processes which are implemented for successful project scope management practices. We have learned how a lack of project scope turns success into failure. Hence, procedures should be performed by project managers so that they could deal with problems. Plan Scope Management is the first process for creating a scope management plan that documents how the project and product scope will be defined, validated, and controlled. Second is Collect Requirements which is a process of determining, documenting, and managing stakeholder needs and requirements to meet project objectives. Define Scope is a process of developing a detailed description of the project and product. Create WBS, which is a process of subdividing project deliverables and project work into smaller, more manageable components. Validate Scope is another process of formalizing acceptance of the completed project deliverables. Lastly, Control Scope is a process for monitoring the status of the project and product scope and managing changes to the scope baseline. Therefore, such methods can reduce project scope, cost and schedule all three constraints successfully.
References
Adam, A. R., & Danaparamita, M. (2016, November). Understanding the influence of poor scope management affecting the successful of an IT Project. In 2016 International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech) (pp. 124-129). IEEE.
Hughes, B., & Cotterell, M. (2011). Software Project Management (2nd ed., pp. 1-396). London: Tata McGraw Hill Education Private Limited.
Project Management Institute. (2017). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (6th ed., pp. 1-976). Newtown Square, PA.
Russell, J., Pferdehirt, W., & Nelson, J. (2018). Project Initiation, Scope, and Structure. Technical Project Management in Living and Geometric Order.
Serra, C. E. M., & Kunc, M. (2015). Benefits realisation management and its influence on project success and on the execution of business strategies. International Journal of Project Management, 33(1), 53-66.