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The first step to successfully completing a project is understanding your client’s exact requirements. You must ensure that you live up to your client’s expectations and give them what they require with utmost efficiency and effectiveness. It makes the working process easier if the team members have an understanding of where the project is headed before getting started with the project
That’s where project scoping and planning take the lead. It is done at the beginning of the project to gather all the necessary information and to ensure that the team members are well-informed. Moreover, this step also ensures that the project is presented in front of the client precisely.
Read on to learn about the process of project scoping and planning and how it makes all the difference.
Project Scoping & Planning: The Process!
Once you adapt to project scoping & planning as a part of beginning a project, you’ll understand the difference it makes and how it accelerates the team’s efficiency.
Working closely with the team members and communicating the best way to go about the project as per the client’s needs will help the team stay organized.
It will also allow your clients to track where the project is headed. Here’s an ideal project scoping & planning process that your organization can follow:
Scoping
In simple words, scoping means” to evaluate”. So you begin by asking various vital questions from your client to understand what they want and what they’re exactly looking for. You can ask your client questions like:
- What’s your business about?
- What are your project goals?
- What are your objectives and motives behind getting this project done?
Asking these questions will help the team members get a direction of how they want to get done with things by evaluating the client’s goals. Scoping will also help your team gather all the information for completing the project.
Briefing the Design Team
The second step in this process is to give your design team complete access to the client. This will allow the team to understand their role in the project. The design team will review the client’s previous design work and analyze what changes need to be made to develop better and improved designs. They’ll also note what needs to be eliminated or added to ensure that the client is satisfied with the result.
Tracking the Project
Once you’re done with scoping, and the design team is briefed, you should put together a project tracker. Tracking the project will include the following aspects:
Timeline: The team should have a set deadline for the project. Having a project timeline will help the team members keep track of their respective work responsibilities. The members will also be able to track whether they’re able to keep up with the estimated deadlines or not.
A Schedule to Ensure Consistent Communication: Here, you create a proper schedule for calls, emails, and meetings throughout the project process. You set dates for providing regular updates to the clients and having team calls and meetings. It is vital to have regular communication among the team members throughout the project.
Tracking the Tasks: While the major project tasks are always discussed and listed before starting the project, you’ll also be hit with impromptu tasks while completing the project.
These tasks hold equal importance, and they cannot be ignored. To ensure that you don’t miss these impromptu tasks, you can create a task tracker where you keep adding these tasks with their respective deadlines.
Creative & Development Feedback: You should document any creative or development feedback you obtain during project calls and meetings. Any glitches highlighted during the project should also be logged so the client can track them, and your team can work on them.
Technicalities
The IT team documents the critical functions of your project and how your team will achieve them.
The technical specification often goes on throughout the project and allows the client to understand what’s inside the project. It’s an added benefit if your organization has an in-house technical team.
The Project Launch
It would be best if you also thought about the project launch beforehand which will take place after the completion of the project. You should plan the launch so that everything goes smoothly when the time comes. The launch plan should also be discussed with the client so that you don’t face any issues later on. Streamline your process by asking several important questions from the client related to the project to understand what they have in mind. This way, you’ll have all the necessary information in hand.
Final Thoughts
The bottom line is that you should always look for ways to improve the processes involved in a project. Project scoping and planning is one such process held in the beginning to ensure that the project gets completed smoothly and with ease.
While every stage of the project holds importance, it is vital to put ample time into project scoping and planning as new members keep joining the organization and should be well-versed with how things work around.
