There are many scoping questions that the project manager must ask during a project.

Below are a series of questions I

use during project initiation:

1. What is the objective of the project

Preferably this should be recorded in a single sentence and reflect what your sponsor wishes to achieve.
Everything you do in the project should be able to be referred back to this statement.

2. What are the deliverables

All projects produce something, these are the project deliverables. These need to be defined early in the
project, clearly and have a measure of quality that can be used to judge their fitness for purpose.

3. Are you solving a problem or building a solution

This defines whether you are working to deliver a prescribed solution or working to find a way to solve a
problem with, as yet, undefined deliverables. The answer to this question will drive how you allocate
resources and manage the project.

4. How will you measure success

This is a fundamental question that should ideally be covered in the project brief or project charter. It sets
the context along with question 1 for the rest of the project. We know the objective and we know how we
are going to measure success at the end of the project. Having this clearly defined allows you as the project
manager to steer your project through the inevitable challenges ahead.

5. What potential is there to negotiate on actual deliverables

This is useful if and when difficult decisions have to be made during the lifecycle of the project. Being
aware of those areas with some flexibility helps the project manager make decisions, this can prompt the
conversation with the customer. Key to watch out for are gold plated requirements which could potentially
be over engineered, a sub question is how good is good enough?

6. What constraints are there on the project

The project context is important. As a project manager it is useful to gain a wider understanding of the
business environment your project is in. Are there commercial, legal or market constraints that could
impact on your project. What budget, time, cost and quality constraints are influencing your project and
impacting your descision making.

7. What implicit assumptions exist

This is one of the most important things to bear in mind as a project manager. Communication is a 2 way
process and we need to reflect back to the customer what we think he or she is telling us. Through
experience the project manager should learn to confirm an reaffirm his or her understanding back to the
customer to reduce the potential for misunderstanding, try to avoid the situation where, later in the
project, the customer utters “…but I thought you understand what I meant when I said….”