Project Scope Template
Define and manage project goals and objectives, on budget and on time.
About the Project Scope Template
A project scope helps you plan and confirm your project’s goals, deliverables, features, functions, tasks, costs, and deadlines. A project manager and team should develop a project scope as early as possible, as it will directly influence both the schedule and cost of a project as it progresses.
Keep reading to learn more about project scopes.
What is a project scope
Typically, a project scope will include the project’s:
Goals
Requirements
Major deliverables
Assumptions
Constraints
Ultimately, a project scope will empower your team to say no when new or unreasonable requests come up, and stick to set timelines and budgets for efficient project delivery.
When to use a project scope
Your team can benefit from a project scope to adopt a clear vision and mutual agreement for what a successful project outcome looks like. Most projects will have checkpoints, milestones or phases, and a project scope will help you stay on track each step of the way.
If you need to allocate resources and form a reasonable timeline, a project scope can help you stay on-budget within a reasonable timeline.
Create your own project scope
Making your own project scopes is easy. Miro’s whiteboard tool is the perfect canvas to create and share them. Get started by selecting the Project Scope Template, then take the following steps to make one of your own.
Invite your team to add notes to each project scope element. Project planning should ideally be a collaborative process, even if a project lead has been selected. If your team is involved from the start, everyone can accept and sign off on the document, prioritize tasks, and avoid scope creep – which can delay a project and prevent its successful completion.
Define your business case and goals. This includes the reason for the project’s funding, and how the project relates to business goals or intended outcomes.
Add the project description and deliverables. Clearly outline what will be delivered throughout the project, and what counts as a final deliverable. You can go into detail here: include elements like quantity, length, and anything else you’d use to measure the frequency and amount of a deliverable.
Fill in project acceptance criteria. Examples of metrics include finishing project requirements on time and on budget, user acceptance testing, or stakeholder review and approval.
Outline project limitations. Setting limits will help you plan whether you have the time or budget to explore alternatives if you encounter roadblocks. Cover yourself by specifying limitations as early as possible.
Add an overview of the project assumptions. Even if you think these are obvious, take the time to outline them so your team members are aware of what to expect.
List any project exclusions. Even if you’ve detailed what you will deliver, it’s also important to itemize what you will not.
Add costs if needed. If you’re an external consultant or agency, you may want to outline costs at every phase or milestone. The clearer you make a case for project scope, the easier it will be to manage and increase costs and timelines as needed.
Get started with this template right now. It’s free
Swimlane Diagram
When processes start to get messy, it’s a good idea to take a step back and visualize who does what and when. A swimlanes diagram takes a familiar, everyday physical place (a lap pool) and turns the idea of “swimlanes” into a metaphor for organizing processes within a team, work group, department, or multilayered organization. This digestible, one-stop visual representation uses the metaphor of lanes in a pool to clarify a complex process. Use a swimlanes diagram to clarify roles before a major project, to bring a new hire up to speed, to update your organizational structure, and much more.
Decision Tree
Making difficult decisions gets easier when you can look clearly at your choices and visualize the outcomes. That’s just what a decision tree will help you do, empowering you to invest your time and money with confidence. A decision tree is a flowchart that looks just how you’d imagine—with “branches” that represent your available choices. It provides a stylized way to play out a series of decisions and see where they lead before you commit your real-world resources, which is especially valuable for startups and smaller companies.
RICE Prioritization
When developing a product roadmap, it can be easy to get lost in the weeds. RICE, which stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort, helps you evaluate and prioritize ideas. Brainstorming new ways to delight your customers can be rewarding, but it can also be overwhelming. You and your team might be tempted to dive into the most exciting ideas first, without taking into account the potential lift. The RICE framework allows your team to carefully consider each potential project and assess its feasibility.
PI Planning
PI planning stands for “program increment planning.” Part of a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), PI planning helps teams strategize toward a shared vision. In a typical PI planning session, teams get together to review a program backlog, align cross-functionally, and decide on next steps. Many teams carry out a PI planning event every 8 to 12 weeks, but you can customize your planning schedule to fit your needs. Use PI planning to break down features, identify risks, find dependencies, and decide which stories you’re going to develop.
Burndown Chart
Whoa whoa whoa, pace yourself! That means knowing how much work is left—and, based on the delivery date, how much time you’ll have for each task. Perfect for project managers, Burndown Charts create a clear visualization of a team’s remaining work to help get it done on time and on budget. These charts have other big benefits, too. They encourage transparency and help individual team members be aware of their work pace so they can adjust or maintain it.
RACI Matrix
The RACI Matrix is an essential management tool that helps teams keep track of roles and responsibilities and can avoid confusion during projects. The acronym RACI stands for Responsible (the person who does the work to achieve the task and is responsible for getting the work done or decision made); Accountable (the person who is accountable for the correct and thorough completion of the task); Consulted (the people who provide information for the project and with whom there is two-way communication); Informed (the people who are kept informed of progress and with whom there is one-way communication).