Vision and Scope Document in Software Project Management

What is Vision and Scope Document?

The vision and scope document in software management is used for developing and confirming a common understanding of the project scope. It is also called a statement of work. By writing this document and circulating it among all involved in the project. The project manager can ensure that all the stakeholders and engineers share a common understanding of the project needs.

Outline of the Vision Scope Document

1. Problem Statement
   • Project Background
   • Stakeholders
   • Users
   • Risks
   • Assumptions
2. Vision
   • Vision Statement
   • List of features
   • Scope of the release
   • Features that are not included

Problem Statement

Project Background-

This section contains the problem statement or a summary of the problem that the project will address. It should provide a brief history of the problem and an explanation of how the organisation justifies its decision to build such a software project.

Stakeholders-

This section will have a list of stakeholders along with their roles.

Users-

In this section an enumerated list of the users.

Risks-

This section contains any potential risks to the project. It could include external factors that could impact the project, issues or problems which could potentially cause project delays or raise issues.

Assumptions-

This is the list of assumptions that the stakeholders or the users or the project team as a whole have made. These assumptions should be then reviewed and any non-technical assumptions should also be listed.

Vision

Vision Statement-

The goal of the vision statement is to describe what the project is expected to accomplish. It should explain the clear purpose of the project. It should contain a solid justification for spending time money and various other resources on the project. The best time to write the vision statement is after talking to the stakeholders and users and writing down their needs. By this time a concrete understanding of the project should develop.

List of Features-

This section contains the list of features i.e. the areas of the software that are going to fulfil some specific needs providing a set of services or capabilities. Any engineered product can be broken down into features. It is useful to describe a project in about so features in the vision and scope document.

Scope of the Release-

Sometimes this software is released in versions with some of the features released in first and a more complete version being released later.

Features that are not Included-

Some of the features in a software product are left purposely. It should be added to this section to tell the user that a decision was made to exclude some features. Thus we can summarize this document as follows. The vision and scope document is a document used for developing and confirming a common understanding of the project’s scope. The scope statement includes some important points like a justification of the project that is business needs that spark the project. It also includes a brief description of the project deliverable also included `are the acceptance criteria like quality, cost etc. It directly or indirectly refers to the product, its objective, its justification and its deliverables and may also get raised as the project progress.