They decided to make no fuss about the wedding. A very small event for a few special friends. After a visit to her mother it was two small events, one wedding at city hall, one at the local church. When they left his mother, all old aunts were invited, and, all being of high age, would of course stay the night. The day she spoke with her best friend, so had to have this great dress, which would need three bridesmaids to carry the thing…

Sounds familiar? You don't have to plan a wedding to see something so elegant and easy, grow and grow and end up getting completely out of hand. You probably heard stories of people wanting to fix a dripping shower and ending up with a complete revision of their bathroom. You must know where to stop and then just simply stop.

With a software project it is essential to know the borders up front. Which aspects are allowed, which one are off limits? If the goal is to cut cost, you can just fire every one. One could image that these kind of changes in personnel are not within the scope of a project. However, switching to a different technology would be. You are allowed to change internal procedure, but not the interfaces with external parties. "The Project Scope" can contain all kinds of statements. The trick is to get it as detailed as possible already at this stage. Together with the goal and constraints it provides information of the room to move.

The project scope can be too large to fit in a certain time frame. The scope can be too small to satisfy the goal. In determining the scope you talk with parties concerned and ask two types of questions:

• Can we change this?


• Must we change this?

You should use the stuff you can change but not have to change, as ammunition to get the needed win-win situations, to be able to change the stuff you must. Wow, play this sentence again, Sam.

Suppose you are allowed to change the scope of training sessions, but you don't have to. Suppose you must change the way a certain department works, administrative procedures now done manually should be highly automated. Employees might become reluctant to become just a typing goat. By providing extra training that makes the employees more state-of-the-art in their field, and focusing on the fact that the time saved by the new system will be used to let them handle the more "challenging" cases, might create the win-win situation you need.

In this way, you should hammer a scope that fits the project goals, constraints and expectations of the stakeholders. To avoid your aunts visiting, send them a piece of the wedding cake instead!