Technical Writing – What is a SCOPE Document?
© Ugur Akinci
A SCOPE document is one of those fundamental documents that define and guide any major project. As a technical writer you may be asked to write one, in close coordination with the project management (or your private client).
In terms of its strategic abstraction, the SCOPE comes right after the VISION document.
The VISION document expresses what the company/project ideally and ultimately tries to accomplish, if no limits (time, staff, finances, technology, etc.) were involved.
The SCOPE document, on the other hand, is all about realistic limits, boundaries, and how to achieve the project’s goals despite such limitations. That’s why most scope documents also do include a section on RISK analysis and management.
The worst-case scenarios and how to cope with them is usually included with a SCOPE document as well.
SCOPE documents differ widely from one project to another. But in its most general outlines, here are its 6 major components:
1)Introduction and definition of project’s goal. List of deliverables.
2)Business rationale and the justification of the project.
3)List of stakeholders and their rights, duties, and responsibilities.
4)List of resources, their availability and limiting factors.
5)Time table for deliverables.
6)Risk analysis and management.
Technical specifications can be written only after a consensus is reached on the all-important SCOPE document. Did you like this post? Can we improve it in any way? What do you think? Please feel free to share your mind… Also see:How to Write a Scope Document in Technical Documentation
Resources:
How to Write a Project Scope in 8 Easy Steps • Asana Scope Baseline, Project Scope Statement (Templates) Developing a complete project scope statement in 2 days
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Its worth pointing out that the vision document is critical. Only through having a clear vision of the project/company can everything else lead on from this point. A poor vision/unclear vision can only result in chaos & failure.
I hear and read a lot about ‘scope creep’. I may be stating the obvious, but this seems like the perfect document to use as a barometer to measure scope creep.
While I don’t have an extensive amount of experience, it is interesting to note that the two recent companies I have worked for as a dedicated tech writer did not employ the Scope document. I’m wondering if the lack of use is common or are my employers missing a gigantic opportunity.
Sandy, I think in most cases there is no written Scope Document as such but it’s implicitly there. The project and product managers and the lead developers talk about it and include it in their design specs. But the proper way is to have it written as a separate document which can be just a single page. In software industry there is an increasing emphasis on quality control in every step of the product life-cycle. That’s why I believe there will be more written scope documents generated in the future. However, whether such documents will be generated by technical writers alone — I doubt it. There’ll always be crucial input from development and engineering. Ugur
does this scoping document apply to creative writing projects? BJ
Babs, the short answer is, no — a “scope document” as such is specific to tech writing. However, conceptually, the “scope” should be a part of the query letter you write to an editor for a creative writing project as well since you need to summarize what the piece is all about. You need to share in a nutshell the most relevant and salient aspects of your work in order to get published. For example, for a book proposal, you need to summarize each chapter and how the narrative evolves and winds its way through the plot. That certainly calls for sharing the “scope” of your creative work even though that’s a label specific to technical writing.