The most important factor to make a software project success

We often talk about resource, budget, timing, quality when talking about project management. I treat project scope management as the most important factor among all the project management factors, more important than factors like schedule, cost, budget, …Since I saw too many times what project team delivered is not what customer wants.

 

Project scope management is essentially acting as the bridge between the project team and outside world, especially customer. The project manager has the responsibility to make sure the project team is doing something expected by business team, or customer. No budget, resource wasted on activities not align with customer request. There are maybe some project sponsored by internal authorities, but still there should be scope statement from the internal authority.

 

The project manager has the responsibility to communicate/control the sub-module scope among the project team.  There are 3 good practices for doing this:

1. Document the scope in structured, better itemized statement list;
2. Organize all stake holders to present the scope in understandable chart;
3. Publish the scope statements and charts to a place easily accessible and editable by relevant stakeholders.

In summary, project manager should ensure project team members are working towards the correct scope at any project stage. I think anyone has experience on software development team with more than 3 software Engineers knows the difficulty to actually achieve this goal.