One of the biggest challenges in product and project management is definition and control of scope. By its nature, a design process is a discovery process. As new things are discovered, scope can increase.
One way to manage scope is through scenarios. While a product can have many processes, interactions, screens or flows, at the human level there are likely to be a quantifiable and definable number of scenarios. After all, products and processes are created to enable someone to do something.
By using scenarios as the "buckets" of what a design needs to enable people to do, it’s possible to manage scope from this perspective. Any new feature or requirement must fall into one of two categories: It either requires a new scenario, or it’s an addition or refinement to an existing scenario. If the scenarios are prioritized, scope impact can be handled by answering the following questions:
- If the new feature requires a new scenario, how high a priority is that scenario?
- If the new feature ties to an existing scenario, does it change the priority of the scenario? Does it change the implementation time for the scenario?
Defining and prioritizing scenarios can be a great help in controlling scope of a project. Scenarios can provide a manageable way of grouping and prioritizing features, innovations and ideas to keep everyone on the same page and the project on-target.
