Important Terms & Definitions - Project Scope Planning

Let us wrap up the Project Scope Planning topic by reviewing the important terms and definitions we have learnt as part of this topic.

• Alternatives identification - A technique used to apply nonstandard approaches, such as brainstorming and lateral thinking, to perform project work.
• Baseline - A reference plan for components, such as schedule, scope, and cost, against which performance deviations are measured. The reference plan can be the original or the modified plan.
• Brainstorming - A creative technique generally used in a group environment to gather ideas as candidates for a solution to a problem or an issue without any immediate evaluation of these ideas. The evaluation and analysis of these ideas happens later.
• Code of accounts - A numbering system used to uniquely identify each component of a WBS.
• Configuration management - Refers to controlling the characteristics of a product, a service, or a result of a project. It includes documenting the features of a product or a service, controlling and documenting changes to the features, and providing support for auditing the products for conformance to requirements.
• Control account - A node in the WBS that acts as a management control point where scope, schedule, and actual cost are integrated and compared to the earned value to measure the project performance.
• Decomposition - A planning technique to subdivide the project scope, including deliverables, into smaller, manageable tasks called work packages.
• Deliverable - A unique and verifiable product, a capability to provide a service, or a result that must be produced to complete a project or a process or phase of the project.
• Lateral thinking - Thinking outside the box, beyond the realm of your experience, to search for new solutions and methods, rather than only better uses of the current solutions and methods.
• Planning package - A WBS component that is below the control account that has a well-defined work content but does not yet have a detailed schedule.
• Product scope - Features and functions that characterize a product, service, or result to be delivered by the project.
• Project management plan - An approved document that describes how the project will be executed, monitored and controlled, and closed.
• Project scope - The work that must be performed (and only that work) to deliver products, services, or results with specified features that were promised by the project. The project scope draws the boundaries around the project—what is included and what is not.
• Project scope statement - A document that defines the scope of a project by stating what needs to be accomplished by the project.
• Requirement - A condition, characteristic, or capability that a specific outcome of the project must have.
• Rolling wave planning - A case of progressive elaboration in which the deliverables about which full information is available are decomposed to the lowest level, whereas the deliverables for which full information is not available are left at higher levels until the information becomes available.
• Scope baseline - The reference scope against which all the scope deviations are measured. It consists of the scope statement, the WBS document, and the WBS dictionary.
• Scope definition - The process used to develop the detailed project scope statement.
• Scope planning - The process of developing the project scope management plan.
• Subprojects - Parts of the main projects that are independent enough that each can be performed by separate project teams.
• Work breakdown structure (WBS) - A deliverable-oriented hierarchical structure that displays the decomposition of deliverables into work, which must be performed to accomplish the project objectives and create the project deliverables.
• Work package - A deliverable or a task at the lowest level of each branch of the WBS.

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