Week 3 - Project management and scope

What is a Project?

A project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to accomplish a unique purpose. Projects normally involve several people performing interrelated activities as part of a team.

The following attributes relate to a project:

• A project has a unique purpose. Every project should have a well-defined objective and should provide a unique product, service, or result.
• A project is temporary. A project has a definite beginning and a definite end and must be completed within the time span.
• A project requires resources, often from various areas. Resources include people, hardware, software, or other assets. Many projects cross departmental or other boundaries in order to achieve their unique purposes.
• A project should have a primary sponsor or customer. Most projects have many interested parties or stakeholders, but someone must take the primary role of sponsorship. The project sponsor usually provides the direction and funding for the project.
• A project involves uncertainty. Because every project is unique, it is sometimes difficult to clearly define the project’s objectives, estimate how long it will take to complete, or how much it will cost. The uncertainty is one of the main reasons project management is so challenging, especially on projects involving new technologies.

Who is a Stakeholder?

A stakeholder is ANYONE who will be affected by the project.

Project Management Framework

 

Project Management involves all of the above process to make a successful project.

The first stage of Project Management is to define the scope of the project. The scope is defined at the very beginning of the project management process, but Scope Management is ongoing.

Project Scope Management

One of the most important and most difficult aspects of project management is defining the scope of a project. Scope refers to all the work involved in creating the products of the project and the processes used to create them. Project stakeholders must come to an agreement on what the products of the project are and, to some extent, how they should be produced. In Multimedia, this is also referred to as a design brief or project brief. Project scope management includes the processes involved in defining and controlling what is or is not included in a project. It ensures that the project team and stakeholders have the same understanding of what products will be produced as a result of the project and what processes will be used in producing them. The main processes involved in project scope management include:

• Initiation - this involves committing the organisation to begin a project or continue to the next phase of a project. An output of initiation processes is a project charter, which is a key document for formally recognising the existence and providing a broad overview of a project.
• Scope planning – this involves developing documents to provide the basis for future project decisions, including the criteria for determining if a project or phase has been completed successfully. The project team creates a scope statement and scope management plan as a result of the scope planning process.
• Scope definition – this involves subdividing the major project deliverables into smaller, more manageable components. The project team creates a work breakdown structure WBS during this process.
• Scope verification – this involves formalising acceptance of the project scope. Key project stakeholders, such as the customer and sponsor for the project, formally accept the deliverables of the project during this process.
• Scope change control – this involves controlling changes to project scope. Scope changes, corrective action, and lessons learned are outputs of this process.

The project manager needs to:

• ascertain the client’s brief
• attune to the client and their culture
• clarify unclear information
• gather sufficient information to write a clear proposal
• explain any queries the client has

One way of achieving this is to create a questionnaire. The questionnaire is used to help both you and the client decide what features are important and the kind of look and feel that the website needs to achieve.

Here are some example questions


https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/20-questions-all-project-managers-should-ask.php


Once you have your questions and they have been answered, you can go ahead and start to put together your scoping document. When it comes to working on a creative project, your scope document and design brief can be interchangeable as they would contain similar information.

What is a Design Brief?

Wikipedia describes a design brief as "A design brief is a comprehensive written document for a design project developed in concert by a person representing the business need for design and the designer. The document is focused on the desired results of design – not aesthetics."

There is no set format for a design brief, but the headings below can be used as a guide.

Business/Corporate Profile

Background information about your company, description of who and what you are.

Market Position

Information about your market, branding, customer base, industry and competitors.

Current Situation

What has happened that has instigated this project. The why or reason for the project.

Objectives

What do you hope to achieve from this project.

Target Audience

Who is your target audience. Are you currently reaching that audience. Why or why not. What are the demographics of your target audience (age, location, cultural, financial). Is there anything unusual about your target audience.

Corporate Branding or personality

What image does your brand currently have. What image do you want to portray with this project. What message do you want to portray. What message do you specifically not want to portray. Use adjectives such as expensive, approachable, trendy, friendly, cutting-edge.

Budget

The all important rough estimate of how much you want to spend on this project or roughly what it would cost.

Timeframe or schedule

What is the timeframe for the project. When MUST it be finished by. Any other date/time constraints.

Medium

What is the medium for the project – website, CD-ROM, Video, DVD, paper. What are the constraints of the chosen media – for example if it a CD-ROM then size will be an issue as well as distribution.

Technical or practical constraints.

Are there any inflexible parameters or constraints that will have some bearing on the project. An example of this could be a corporate style guide.

Purpose of  Design Brief

A design brief is in the format of a short informal report and these would become the headings. The information could come from the client directly as a brief, or you could put it together after you have interviewed the client. It is just a guideline and should not include specific information such as actual page designs or layouts.

A designer will use the design brief to confirm requirements with their client. A good designer will then go off and create some design layouts, samples, storyboard, and even a mock-up before the final product is developed.

 A design brief may be written by the client, outlining what they require, or by the designer after consultation with the client. It is a guideline of what work is to be done. Usually, if instigated by the designer, it would be called a Scoping Document rather than a Design Brief, but either way, it should form the basis of any contract between you (the designer) and your client.

Activity:

Create a questionnaire that can be used to gather information regarding a new website.

I am giving you the "heads up" - you will be working in pairs for your major project. You will need to use this questionnaire with your partner to scope out their web design project. Full guidelines will be provided next week, but this week you should get prepared!!