What Are Requirements Management Plan & Scope Management Plan?

The second project management knowledge area of Project Management is Scope Management. PMP Scope Management has six processes and Plan scope management process is the first one. Scope Management plan and Requirements Management plan are the outputs of this process. Further information about Scope Management plan and Requirements Management plan can be found in project management professional certification trainings. 

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In this article, we are going to give the definition of Plan Scope Management Process, Scope Management Plan and Requirements Management plan.

What is Plan Scope Management Process?

Plan Scope Management process of the Scope Management knowledge area is the process of creating a scope management plan that documents how the project scope will be defined, validated and controlled. The scope of the project will be shaped by the requirements of the customer and project stakeholders. Then, once the project produces outputs, these need to be validated whether the produced outputs meet the desired expectations. Throughout the project, the scope must be controlled and project manager must prevent any scope creeps.

The output of the Plan Scope Management Process is Scope Management Plan and Requirements Management Plan. Now we will see what are scope management plan and requirements management plan and what these two plans include.

What is Scope Management Plan?

Scope Management plan is defined in PMP courses as the plan which describes how the scope will be defined, developed, monitored, controlled and verified. For instance,

• how to collect requirements of customer and project stakeholders,
• how to eliminate conflicting requirements,
• how to track whether the agreed scope is being delivered
• how to verify whether the agreed project deliverables

These are all produced and all detailed in the Scope Management Plan.

Since Scope Management Plan is also a management plan it is part of the project management plan as well. Scope management plan is a major input to Develop Project Management Plan process. Because the scope of a project defines what will be done throughout the project. Based on the scope of a project, critical aspects of a project such as the schedule, budget, quality and resource estimations are affected directly. Therefore, scope management plan, which will help to finalize the scope of a project is a crucial input for the Develop Project Management Plan process.

What is included in Scope Management Plan?

Scope Management Plan includes:

Processes for preparing a detailed project scope statement is included in Scope Management plan. Project scope statement describes the scope of a project at a very high level. Scope Management plan will guide on preparing a detailed project scope statement.

Scope Management Plan includes processes that enable the creation of WBS. WBS is the abbreviation of Work Breakdown Structure. WBS shows the hierarchy of activities and work packages that will be delivered to complete overall project scope. For instance, an e-commerce shopping website can include several systems such as member management system, transaction management system, marketing system etc. Under these systems, there will be several work packages. Transaction management system can include shopping card function, credit card verification method etc. These functions may require several activities to complete. Therefore, WBS of a project shows a blueprint of the work that needs to be completed throughout the project.

Scope Management Plan also includes processes that establish how the WBS will be maintained and approved. Once the WBS of a project is finalized, it needs to be approved by the project stakeholders before starting project execution.

Scope Management Plan also includes processes that specify how formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables will be obtained.

As we described already, scope management plan includes verification and validation of the project scope as well. Once project deliverables are produced, these are first tested by the project team and any defects that do not meet the agreed requirements are fixed. After these tests, produced deliverables must be checked by the customer and approved officially if they meet the agreed requirements in the beginning.

Scope Management Plan also includes processes to control how requests for changes to the detailed project scope statement will be processed. After the scope is finalized and approved by the project stakeholders, any change to the scope must be done through a formal change request process. And only approved changes by the change control board can be implemented in a project. Respectively, if there is a change, project scope statement must be revised accordingly and how to do this is documented in the Scope Management Plan.

What is Requirements Management Plan?

Requirements Management Plan describes how requirements will be analyzed, documented and managed. Requirements are the foundations of project scope. Stakeholder requirements are gathered, evaluated and finalized and then these constitute the foundations of project scope.

What is Included in Requirements Management Plan?

Requirements Management Plan includes:

How requirements activities will be planned, tracked and reported. Each requirement in a project must be documented and history of this requirement must be stored in project records. Even if a requirement is invalidated or eliminated during meetings, the reason for elimination or reference to conflicting requirements must be documented for future references.

Configuration management activities are included in the Requirements Management Plan as well. Configuration management of a project mainly deals with how the versioning of project documents will be done in a project.

Requirements prioritization process must be included in the Requirements Management Plan. Depending on the size and context of the project, there can be several requirements coming from several project stakeholders. Many of these requirements might be conflicting with each other or some of the requirements will be more important than others. How to do these prioritizations must be documented in the Requirements Management Plan.

Product metrics must be included in the Requirements Management Plan as well. For instance, will you use European metrics or US metrics in your project? These will affect how you will record your quality assurance results and how you will report your project outputs to project stakeholders.

Finally, traceability structure is included in the requirements management plan. Once the requirements of the project are finalized, these requirements must be checked and tracked throughout the project whether they are met with the project deliverables. How to trace these requirements must be documented in the requirements management plan.

Briefly, Scope Management Plan and Requirements management plan are the outputs of  Plan Scope Management Process. How the project scope will be defined, validated and controlled are documented in Scope Management plan. How requirements will be analyzed, documented and managed is documented in Requirements Management plan.