estimates and create a detailed plan for making sure that he
does Project Apex right.
Before we rejoin Brad in this endeavor, let’s take a closer
look at some of those principles and philosophies of planning—
and of estimating.
An Introduction to Project Planning
As much as we talk about project planning, it’s an elusive thing
to characterize in a few words or graphics. Why? Well, for one
thing, “the plan” can assume many different shapes, sizes, and
forms. Many people equate theplanwith theschedule, but. as
we’ll see, there’s much more to a plan than just a schedule.
Project plans are considered to consist of three fundamental
“dimensions”
- cost: how much money that will be spent and how it’s
budgeted over time - time: how long it will take to execute work—individually
and as a total project - scope: what is to be done
Creating an accurate, credible project plan requires a
98 Project Management
Scope—A Tale of Two Meanings
The term scopeactually has two meanings that are quite dif-
ferent in concept. It’s important to understand what each
meaning represents and how they are applied in discussions you may
have.
Project scopeis a term that’s most closely associated with the mis-
sion, goals, and objectives of the project. It may be thought of as the
overall size of the project or a high-level description of what the proj-
ect will tackle. For example, building and installing a few storage racks
has a much smaller project scopethan installing a computer-controlled
storage and retrieval system.
Scope of workrefers to all of the individual elements of work (taken
collectively) that must be performed to accomplish the project.The
efforts represented by all of the items that appear on your schedule
or in your activities listing constitute the scope of work.