What is the Scope of Work Document?
The Scope of the work document is the cliff notes about a project’s development process.
These documents contain everything related to the project, for example, Delivery schedules, the terms, and conditions of the project, all the different work details related to the project, and all the different deliverables that are expected from the project.
You have to think about the scope of work document as a map to guide you through the different project development steps and all the other elements related to the project, to ensure that you have a complete understanding of the project variables and the development process.
If you are working as a project manager in your company, you have to develop or have developed a detailed SOW document to make sure that every member of the team, every member of the company, and the stakeholders connected to the project knows about the expectations from the project.
This document will also help you in making sure that everyone knows what they have to do and what they have to develop via the development process.
The following are the different sections that must be included in an SOW document. Let’s take a look at them.
1. Terms and Conditions
This section contains all of the different requirements, conditions, and terms that have not been made clear to the stakeholders connected to the project.
2. Budget Info
In this section, the financial information about the project is described for the stakeholders. Every single dime that is going to be spent in the development process and all of the different elements connected to the project is described in this section of the SOW document.
3. Individual Tasks
This is where all the different tasks related to every single member of the development team are discussed. The deliverables whether they are being worked on in a sprint or throughout the development process, are discussed in this section.
4. Project Objectives
This is one of the most important elements of the SOW document.
Every single brainstorming session, problem statement, and thought associated with the project is discussed in this session to make sure that everyone knows about the issue the company is facing and how this project is going to solve the issue.
5. Expected Results
In this section, all the different goals and deliverables are discussed. These include all of the problem statements that are connected to the project like the increase in sales, different conversion metrics, and the expected increase in overall traffic.
All of the different objectives that are prompting the company to develop the project are discussed in this section.
Steps to Write a Perfect Scope of Work Document
Let’s discuss these steps in detail.
1. Introduction
At the very start of the project, the ideas and brainstorming sessions about the project are transcribed, and all the details about the project or the service being delivered are ironed out.
These can include all of the different details about the work that is being done by the product and the different parties that are going to be involved in the development process of the project.
This section also contains the formal agreements and details that have to be ironed out at the start of the project.
- Contracts are discussed in this stage which is the mutually agreed upon terms between the many different entities related to the project
- The standings offer to acquire the resources that the company might need in completing the development process are also discussed in this section
2. Project Overview
In this section, the details about why this project is being done and what the ultimate course of development is going to be. These little details are reviewed and made sure that everything matches the purpose of the project to be developed in the first place.
Just make sure that the wording that you use in this section is easy to understand because it is the first step to making external connections realize what we are on about and what do we intend to do with the product/service.
As a high ranking Salesforce employee shares:
“If a coworker or family member cannot explain what the scope is and what success looks like then this foundational section needs to be updated until it is crystal clear.”
3. Project Objectives
In this section, we discuss all of the different objectives that the company wants to accomplish through the project.
Whether they want to solve an organizational paradigm issue that hasn’t been solved yet or are they trying to find a solution for an issue that has been looked at before, but the solution didn’t agree with the general population of the professional paradigm.
Check this out:
How to Write Company OKRs for Effective Goal-Setting?
4. Scope of Work
The next item on the list is the SOW that describes all of the work activities that is needed to be done to make the project a definite success.
When you design this section of the document, just make sure that the section doesn’t dive into specifics as the details are going to be discussed in the next section. Try to design this section either as a simple explanation that gives an overview of all of the work or you can design this as a bullet list.
Most of the scope of work sections of the projects that are developed normally is a simple explanation of things but there are times when the project requires that the SOW section of the document must contain technical details about the software and hardware that is to be used in the development process.
5. List of Tasks
The next section is as the name describes it, a souped-up list of all of the different tasks, activities, and processes that need to be worked on, to make sure that the process is a definite success, and nothing is left undone.
One thing that you can do in this section is to make sure that all of the different items listed in this section are easily readable and understandable. This will ensure that the reader understands all of the different things that you have listed in the section and gets to work as soon as possible.
You need to remember that these tasks are not the deliverables associated with the project. These are the actions that you are going to perform, to develop all of the deliverables on time, and make the project development process a success.
Article originally published at www.ntaskmanager.com on 1st October 2020.
