Not A Weapon Of Control
If you mention the word “Scope” to most people in the project's community, the first word they think of is “control”. As a result, too often projects are scoped too tightly from the outset as part of this ‘control’ mentality and thus miss large areas of real value because of how the scope is defined.
“Too broad a scope can lead to ‘analysis paralysis’", is one argument.
“We can’t deliver complex projects, so we’ll keep the scope focused” is another argument.
The underlying assumption is that the initial scope at the concept stage is the final scope. This does not need to be the case; indeed it should not be the case.
Imagine if you have a tract of land and you are prospecting for gold. You could define your prospecting scope to be one section of the land that you reasonably expect to contain gold. Or, you can prospect the whole land to find out where the gold is. With the latter approach you’ll not only find where the concentration of gold is but why it is not worthwhile prospecting in the other areas (avoiding later scope creep). Importantly, you’ll know where the value is.
Opportunity Scope Versus Solution Scope
This is the concept behind “opportunity scope” management. At the beginning of the project as you are working through the concept, you should define the scope broadly so you can discover where the value is.
THEN you can hone down the scope to the “solution scope” at the business case step to focus the project, and its associated investment (cost), on the areas with the greatest returns. Often, we have found, you can deliver 90% of the value for 60% of the cost.
In Conclusion
By splitting your project into ‘opportunity’ and then ‘solution’ scope, you can invest some funds just to find where the value is, and then target the majority of your funding on the areas of greatest value, knowing that you’ve identified where that real value lies.
What’s stopping from maximising opportunity scope?
I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts below.
