INTRODUCTION

This guide book is intended to introduce Project Managers to the basic concept of Project Management and the PMI Body of Knowledge (BOK). This short guide looks at defining the Scope of a Project, the method and techniques to use, the initiation steps and formal planning procedures required for a medium complexity project. The approach will be a structured approach loosely based upon the PMI BOK.

The PMBOK approach follows the guideline and navigation procedure as illustrated above.

THE PROJECT CHARTER
The Project Charter is a vision statement that formally recognizes the existence of the project. It describes the:

• Project purpose and justification
• Authority of the Project Manager
• Business needs addressed by the project
• External constraints and assumptions
• Summary milestone schedule (usually shown as external deliverable dates)
• Summary project budget (often expressed as a cost constraint)
• Stakeholders and functional organizations involved (including identification of the project sponsor)

This important document is essentially the baseline Terms of Reference for the project and forms the contract between the Project Manager and the Project Sponsor. There are guideline templates for completing this document within the PMI method based approach. This document is managed under version control throughout the lifecycle of the project and is modified where any change requests are approved.
PROJECT SCOPE STATEMENT
The Scope Statement provides a common understanding of project scope among stakeholders and a documented basis for future project decisions. It should include:

• Objectives and critical success factors of the project
• Products or services delivered by the project (including acceptance criteria)
• Specific inclusion and exclusion criteria
• Project constraints and assumptions
• Known project risks and responses
• The strategy for development and deployment of project deliverables
• Summary milestone schedule (now with internal deliverable dates)
• Order of magnitude project cost estimate

The Scope Management Plan

The Scope Management Plan describes how project scope will be defined, documented, verified and controlled. It should include:

Scope documentation and approvals required,

• A description of the process to create the project Work Breakdown Structure
• An assessment of expected stability of project scope
• How deliverables will be reviewed, accepted and approved
• A description of how scope changes will be managed and integrated into the project plan

THE WORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTURE

The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) provides an initial decomposition of project deliverables into smaller packages of work to support planning and estimating activities. The WBS is defined in the PMBOK as ‘A deliverable-oriented grouping of project elements that organizes and defines the total work scope of the project’. Each descending level represents an increasingly detailed definition of the project work. This is an extremely important part of the project planning process as it provides a blueprint for the structure of the plan.

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