The Key to Project Success: Reducing Solution Scope

Huge projects with big requirements documents can be very risky. They are complex and according to Standish Group are almost impossible to deliver on time and on budget. Often, they address too much functionality at one time, creating unnecessary complexity and waste. Using traditional methods for developing and managing requirements, it is nearly impossible to prioritize what is important and what is not. The result is that we end up falling short on delivering the value we intended. 

Instead of developing unruly requirements documents, the solution is to break up the scope of large projects into more manageable components called features, which can be independently discovered, developed, built, and delivered. By dividing projects into independent, manageable components that each relates to a specific goal, we are able to speed up the process of delivering value to our customers and ensuring every project achieves tangible results. 

According to the CHAOS Manifesto 2013 by the Standish Group, large projects are completely unnecessary, and all large projects can be broken into a series of independent components that can be worked on at the same time by different development teams. Each component helps users achieve a specific goal. It’s better to develop the solution scope using components such as features and treat each component like a small project with a designated project team. It’s not enough that we divide our projects into manageable components, we also need to eliminate features that provide little or no value...