What is Scope Baseline? Components, Examples, Templates

Projects are temporary endeavors taken up to achieve the desired outcomes. The temporary endeavors are taken up based on input from many stakeholders who define their requirements and expectations for the project. It is nearly impossible to satisfy all project stakeholders or meet all their expectations during the short project timeline. This is because customers and stakeholders love to envision incremental evolution of the outcome as the team continues building the project requirements. To avoid the chaos or imbalance caused by this ever-growing vision and likes of the project stakeholders, the project manager needs to use a powerful project management concept. In this article today, we will be reviewing all about this concept, i.e., what is scope baseline, what is its importance, how it is built, the pros and cons of using it, and how to develop a scope baseline in the project. So, let us begin our project journey now!

What is the scope baseline in Project Management?

The project scope baseline defines the formal and agreed boundaries or limits of what needs to be included in the project delivery. To clearly understand the scope baseline in project management, let us first learn about project scope, which is comprised of two major elements - product scope (the activities done to build the features and functionalities of the product as per specified requirements, i.e., the output) and project scope (the work performed to create the output, i.e., the work, methods, processes to create project deliverables) which together form the overall scope that needs to be marked as a baseline, i.e., set as a reference or to be frozen during project planning to be used as a benchmark or comparison point to guide the project execution. The scope baseline in project management serves as a formal agreement among the team and stakeholders, i.e., any changes would have to go through a formal change management process based on reviews and approvals. This is the scope baseline importance and how it helps guard the project against scope creep and derailment from planned activities.

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Why Project Scope Baselines are Important?

Scope is one of the key project management constraints, along with schedule and cost.

Project scope baselines are important tools for any project to establish change control processes and avoid pitfalls of project management in many ways, such as:

• Scope baselines institute alignment between project stakeholders and the team, resulting in consensus from top-to-bottom on the objectives and deliverables
• Helps manage risks by minimizing chances of scope creep and its negative impacts on the project.
• Lays the foundation for a formal and agreed change management process in the project.
• Constitutes the benchmark for project performance, i.e., baselines established in planning are used to measure against the actuals to understand project performance and variations.

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What is the Scope Baseline Used for?

Scope baseline in project management, as we have seen above, is primarily used to strengthen the project governance model by:

1. Controlling and Success Measurement: Project scope helps assess project performance and provides measures for benchmarking project success and establishing measures to control variations and bring projects on track.
2. Documentation of Stakeholder Agreement on the Scope: Baselining the scope can only be possible after approval from stakeholders, which means getting the buy-in and agreement to limit the product and project scope to the defined boundaries.
3. Basis of the Change Control Assessments: A scope baseline calls for any new requests or enhancements to be triaged and reviewed via an established change control process and assessment of finer details before accepting any changes, resulting in minimal impact on the other project baselines.
4. Protection against Scope Creep: With an effective and established change control process, the risk of scope creep, i.e., uncontrolled changes in the project, comes to a minimum, also helping manage adverse expectations of stakeholders, if any.

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Components of a Scope Baseline

A project scope baseline is a key piece of project planning and includes the following key components:

• Project Scope Statement: which lists the committed deliverables and predetermined objectives to define the user needs and boundaries in which these needs can be fulfilled
• Work-breakdown structure: decomposition of deliverables into smaller and more manageable components to define how the user needs can be accomplished and link items in a hierarchical order
• WBS Dictionary: defines deliverables with related tasks and activities to link the topmost item to the lowest to group, define, and control delivery.

The above components of a scope baseline help put together the scope baseline in the project planning phase to establish the project scope guideline for execution. The project scope statement strives to determine which requirements from the product and project scope formulate the agreed deliverables and what will explicitly not be done/performed as part of the project. This distinction of scope becomes highly critical during the project execution phase and helps enforce change requests per the defined change management process. Regarding project management processes, the scope baseline becomes an output of the create WBS process and hence uses the WBS WBS dictionary as the core input.

How to Develop a scope baseline for your project?

Having understood what is a scope baseline and what its key components are, let me now explain the steps involved in understanding how to create a scope baseline for the project.

1. Develop a scope statement: The first step is to develop a scope statement that includes the details of the deliverables and project objectives, viz.

• Project objectives
• Project deliverables
• List of inclusions/exclusions from the deliverables
• Acceptance criteria
• Any other supporting deliverables/activities
• Assumptions and constraints currently known

2. Create a WBS: The next step involves creating a WBS and corresponding WBS dictionary to decompose the project scope into tasks and activities and weave the hierarchy together to strengthen the delivery framework. By creating a WBS hierarchy, the project manager helps establish the control accounts, the planning packages, and the respective work packages, defining a bi-directional hierarchy.

3. Create a WBS dictionary: Once the deliverables are decomposed into a hierarchical WBS format, further details regarding the known assumptions, acceptance criteria, finer task details, and responsibilities are added to the WBS dictionary.

4. Gain stakeholder approval: After documenting the scope and defining the work breakdown, the most important step is presenting it to the stakeholders and getting their consent. The mode, level, and type of approvals for the scope baseline differ according to the project charter and the governance framework. Apart from other stakeholders, the project sponsor and senior leadership are key members who must review and sign off to convert the above documentation into a formalized project baseline.

5. Share the scope baseline with your team: To bring all team members and stakeholders to a common page on the project scope and deliverables, it is important to communicate the scope baseline to the team. This helps create a top-down alignment in the organization to smoothen the execution phase, avoid scope creep, and clarify change management processes.

Scope Baseline Template

A project scope baseline template, also sometimes referred to as a project scope template, may differ from organization to organization, but here is a common scope baseline template for reference to get started with:

• Template 1: Download the Scope Baseline template (Docx) here!
• Template 2: Download the Project Scope Baseline template (Xlsx) here!

Example of a Scope Baseline

To understand the scope baseline, let us use a very simple example of what is described as building a concept electric vehicle.

A. Project Scope Description: Build a sustainable and low-cost electric vehicle as a four-seater hatchback model with a two-seater convertible offering minimal recharge time (max 15 minutes for full charge), a joystick-based gearing system, and a replaceable battery model.

B. Project Deliverables

Inclusions:

• Concept hatchback model with required spares/accessories
• Replaceable battery
• Charging gear

Exclusions:

• Battery docking station
• Infotainment system

C. Project Constraints

• Availability of charging technology
• Procurement of high-density battery sealing chamber
• Import duties on raw materials
• Competitors about to launch new model - date unannounced

D. Project success criteria

• Sales improvement
• Region-based demand
• Customer referrals

The above is just a glimpse of how a project scope baseline gets formulated; there is much more to it. Understand this in detail and build end-to-end project management expertise by learning from KnowledgeHut's Project Management training courses.

Pros and Cons of a well-defined scope baseline

It is unanimously agreed by professionals across various industries that having a project baseline may not have any major cons but is a harbinger of multiple benefits, such as helping clarify project objectives, determining the inclusions and exclusions in project scope, and setting the boundaries for the projects. According to a study by the Project Management Institute (PMI), projects with a thorough scope management process with baselines established had a better success rate with minimal impacts on other project constraints.

Establishing a scope baseline in the project undertakes the additional responsibility of clarifying how the scope changes can be dealt with and avoiding any undesired project disruptions in the execution or later phases of the project. Having an assertive scope baseline can also set stakeholder expectations following project priorities, help align resources and communication, and mitigate risks, thereby enhancing stakeholder engagement and trust.

What Industries Are Scope Baselines Used In?

If I may quote in simple terms, any industry that follows project management processes does and must create the project baselines and, specifically, the scope baseline. Popular areas of application of this key project management process output include:

• Project Management, Consulting and Strategy
• Operation Management
• Event management
• Services industry and service offerings
• Construction, Design, and Architecture
• Packaging
• Software and Hardware

Nonetheless, irrespective of the industry type, the gist of the scope baseline remains to protect the project from unwanted changes and bring alignment amidst chaos.

Scope baseline vs scope creep

Scope baseline and scope creep are two vastly different project management concepts. While scope baseline refers to benchmarking the project scope as a reference point, it is often done to avoid the latter, i.e., scope creep, which necessarily means unaccounted changes that gradually affect and derail the project from its originally planned activities. Here is a list of points that differ between the two:

Scope Creep	Scope Baseline
Scope creep is essentially the problem itself, i.e., unaccounted changes affecting agreed project scope or other baselines.	Scope baseline is the solution to the scope creep problem by documenting and agreeing on the project scope.
Is an informal and unaccounted change	It is a formal and agreed process step
This can occur during the planning or execution phases	It is formalized during planning and used during execution
It is negative and brings problems	It is positive and drives alignment

Conclusion

Project Scope, along with schedule and cost, formulates the project management triangle, designating the key challenges that projects may pose if they are not well managed or articulated. Project scope baselines are key criteria to help bring transparency to what can be considered included, i.e., in-scope, and what can be considered excluded, i.e., out-of-scope for the project. The scope baseline is formulated using the project scope statement (list of deliverables and objectives), the work breakdown structure (WBS), and the WBS dictionary, defining the project deliverables' what and how.

Creating the scope baseline and defining the change management process is only the commencement; project performance must be thoroughly examined occasionally to remain in line with the plan and not go over or against the scope baseline. A well-managed scope baseline can go a long way to avoid traps of scope creep or gold plating by allowing project teams to focus only and ONLY on what is committed, ignoring all other noise.