A well-developed project scope statement provides the project team with information the team needs to design and implement the project execution plan. The well-developed project scope also provides the team with an understanding of the purpose of the project and the basis for defining project success.
Scope Document for Training Auto Workers
An automotive company is building a new plant to produce electric passenger cars in the southeast United States. As the plant nears completion, the plant’s manager issues a contract to train the new plant workers. The training of workers who will be maintaining the production equipment will be done by the equipment suppliers and will not be in the scope of the training contract.
The scope of work for the training project will include the identification of the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed by each classification of worker and the development of the delivery methodology that will effectively and efficiently develop the identified knowledge, skills, and abilities (online, classroom, hands-on). The scope will also include delivery of the training, evaluation of the workers after training, and the development of training records. Items not included in the project scope are items that will be the responsibility of the automotive company, such as the selection and hiring of the workers and the provision of the automotive tools and equipment needed for training. These exclusions are specifically stated in the scope document.
During the design of the plant, the Human Resources Division of the company explored different workforce models. The plant will be a typical assembly operation working three shifts. Experience in other plants indicated that a team-based approach combined with a lean manufacturing philosophy produced the highest productivity. This information was included in the documents provided to the team developing the training project’s scope. The plant manager, the human resources manager, and the plant engineer reviewed and occasionally made changes to the draft training scope.
The scope of work for the training project was developed from a combination of information from experts with previous experience, documents that reflected the plant operation philosophy, and selected managers from operations and human resources. All the knowledge needed to develop the scope was within the automotive project team. Sometimes outside consultants are needed to develop a complete project scope. For example, if the team in our automotive training example did not have experience in the start-up of another automotive plant, then the hiring of a consultant with that experience might have been required to understand the entire scope of activities needed for training the automotive workforce.
The automotive project described above is a typical example of the types of information and the people involved in developing a project scope. From the information in the project description, the project team could develop a project scope document.
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