There is an on going debate on New Grange regarding the need to separate Project Scope from Product Scope. This likely appears esoteric to most readers and probably down right useless to some. I share that view ate times.
Here's what PMI and PMBOK have to say about this.
- "Scope" (on its own) is defined as "The sum of the products, services, and results to be provided as a project. See also project scope and product scope."
- "Project Scope" is defined as "The work that must be performed to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions."
- "Product Scope" is defined as "The features and functions that characterize a product, service or result."
Here's what Systems Engineering has to say
- Systems Engineering is an interdisciplinary approach, encompassing the entire technical effort to evolve and verify and integrated and life-cycle balanced set of system people, product and process solutions that satisfy customer needs.
- Systems Engineering encompasses (a) the technical efforts related to the development, manufacturing, verification, deployment, operations, support, and disposal of and user training for, systems products and processes; (b) the definition and management of the system configuration; (c) the translation of the system definition into work breakdown structures; and (d) development of information for management decision making.
Why is this an Issue?
When product scope and project are separated, a serious gap appears in the overall success of the endeavor. The Integrated Master Plan / Integrated Master Schedule (IMP/IMS) paradigm DOES NOT separate these two. The Program Events, Significant Accomplishments, Accomplishment Criteria and the associated tasks are directly connected with the features and functions of the Project. The IMS describes the increasing maturity of these features and functions in terms of the work needed to deliver them. It also describes the features and functions in terms of Technical Performance Measures. It is a description of BOTH the Product scope and the Project scope in a single narrative - the IMS Narrative.
Since the PMBOK narrative cannot state "scope" in the absence of either Product or Project, there is literally no way to speak of them as connected. They are taught separately, they are managed separately. There is no term to describe this connection. Since Project means project activities, doing the work of delivering the product scope, including project management. Product means the features and functions that are delivered.
In the IMP/IMS paradigm, the product features and functions are embedded in the "capabilities" of the delivered entity. A flying machine, a software system, an operational system. A "system."
The delivery of this "system" is part of the system. This is the tautological definition of systems engineering. Both product and project scope in one system.
So Once Again Why is This Important?
If they are separated, then the management of them is separated. The "systems analysis" (not the old IT systems analysis) is lost, the systems trades that are part of systems engineering is lost. The visibility of the whole is lost.
Solutions should always concentrate on the whole and not an assembling of parts. All great principles have one thing in common. They are simple. After one realizes such a simple but profound principle, one can not stop wondering how one survived without its knowledge.
-- Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, Oxford University Press 1979
