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In order to successfully manage this role one has to possess the following attributes:
· Foresight, innovation and the ability to ‘think out of the box’. The combination of these factors creates a conducive atmosphere that generates a smooth conclusion to any project.
· Through empathy a strong pro-social environment manifests itself throughout the team members thereby maximizing profit coupled with client satisfaction and repeat business.
· Strong and transparent communication in dealing initially with all staff issues. [This is becoming increasingly important] Unless one has the ability to ensure that all staff ‘buy-in’ to the required goals [targets] of the project it will be derailed and would require tough management in order to rectify resulting in depleted margins and a late project which no one can afford in this highly competitive industry.
Dear Lina.Everyone has his own ways of planning, If we have enough internal resourses or if we need external resources, in both cases I would make Sub-SOW to control and monitor the project effectively.Any or Every project has a scope of works, that in brief is called SOW
The SOW defines : What we need to do ? In what time period we need to do ? and At what cost we need to do ? To save profit for the company we work for ? Hence a thorough understanding of SOW is absolutely necessary. The industry today is going at such a rapid pace that organizations are in no temperament to wait for resources to be available for executing a project as any organization wants to reap rich benefits out of any project in the earliest possible time. Thus if we have an approved project with the required budget and if there are challenges with the availability of internal resources, then we start searching for external partners with the required skill-set in order to give a quick kick start to the project. Hence we look for that Vendor/Sub-contractor/Experts as external input to our project. So before we look for the required project inputs, we plan in following ways by defining a new SOW under the existing SOW that we agreed with our main project client. Our Sub Scope will have : Main SOW - Constraints – Change Controls – Limiting Conditions – Final check control before Project Delivery 1. Scope - Project Background and the new Scope Information's.
Any SOW that is being sent out to a Vendor/Sub-contractor/Experts, should have clarity on the project background information, product or the applications (that get impacted because of the current project) related history information, technologies that the project, product or the applications are built with, a high level overview of where the project, applications and its architecture sits within the organization and what’s the new thing that will be introduced as part of the current project/SOW. 2. Outline constraints - Technology, Methodology, Testing Considerations, Review Procedure and Penalty Conditions. This is necessary to ensure that the vendor implements the project using the technology and architecture standards that are on-par with the organization and that these can be easily plugged into the current system without any hindrance to the integration, flexibility, scalability, reliability and performance specifications. Details about the process of Peer Review, Product Quality, Unit Testing, Integration Testing, Data Testing, Security and performance testing and the success criteria for the testing cycles must be clearly stated in the SOW. On the other hand, these success criteria should also be mapped to the corresponding penalties that the vendor would need to face in case of non-compliance with any of the delivery requirements by the vendor. This could also lead to the vendor having to completely re-execute the whole project with no additional cost to the customer/organization.
3. Change Control - How to handle change to the scope of the work or project.
One of the most common problems heard in the software services industry even today is that there are always soft and hard communications going back and forth between the customer and the vendor over the issue of scope change and that there has been a misunderstanding of scope between the customer and the vendor which leads to a situation wherein the customer expects a part of the product as part of the defined scope whereas the vendor retracts stating that this scope was not mentioned with the SOW requirements and hence would need to be treated as a scope creep or a scope change. No just this, in such situations, any small change in scope would trigger a corresponding impact of time and cost for either the vendor or the customer depending on the direction the communication wind moves. In order to avoid the above mentioned type of scenarios, an SOW should always contain details about what would mean by a change for the work/project under consideration. It should clearly state what kind of implicit/explicit requirements would be treated as a change and if at some change is identified, define the process route that would be taken to formally approve that change request and also highlight the corresponding implications of time/cost to the project and also to the Customer/Vendor. Rules/Templates/Documents about the change control are normally included within a SOW and these explain the members of the Change Control Board for the current project and the also the process of change control that would need to be followed for a successful project execution.
4. Boundaries and Conditions - Type of Contract, Constrictions of Time and Cost and Project Extension Implications. This is by far the most important information that must be included in a vendor SOW. It encompasses the information related to the type of contract the customer and the Vendor agree to for the given scope of work. Though there are several types of contracts that exist out there, but the “Fixed Cost” and “Time & Material” are the most common types of contracts that the industry organizations choose based on the type of the project/work they are dealing. If we think from a customer perspective, a” Fixed Price” contract is the most advantageous since it would mean that the vendor agrees to provide all the requirements mentioned for total fixed cost mentioned in the SOW including any bug fixes in the new product, penalty conditions and support the new product as per all the conditions mentioned in the SOW. Most “Vendors” therefore think twice or thrice before they agree to a “Fixed-Price” contract, since once they agree to a fixed cost, they need to abide by all those delivery conditions till the end of the scope of work. But, if you are a customer, a “Fixed-Price” contract is the one you should aim at.
The second one, “Time & Material”, as the name suggests, charges the customer for the amount of time the vendor resources spend on the project (Based on the corresponding resource per hour costs) irrespective of the amount of work completed. The “Time & Material” contracts can be time-bound as well wherein a time constraint if given to the vendor which means that the given scope of work needs to be completed within the given time-frame, no matter how many resources the vendor fields in for the project for the given time-period. And the vendor can charge the customer for the total hours that the vendor resources spend on the project within the given time frame. It is also easier to extend a “Time and Material” contract, since it’s only the new scope of work that gets added to the project and there is no need to add any new budget numbers for the new scope since the contract resource costs and contract type are already agreed upon and it’s just the add-on hours that the vendor will need to charge the customer for the additional scope of work. An SOW should also contain information about the Payment schedules - meaning the contract should clearly state as to when and in which currency will the payments be made to the vendor based on the progress of the scope of work. 5. Check all the above4 with the original SOW or Agreement, Contract or the MOU that our organization has signed. It is this agreement that describes the handshake between the two organizations and also the various confidentiality clauses related to the organizations information, data and products that the vendor needs to maintain secrecy about and ensure that none of this information is disclosed to the external world without prior approval from the customer. This document is the legal binding document between the two organizations which also include the various penalty related information in case the vendor fails to adhere to the conditions or the constraints set forth within the agreement/contract. In case of a scenario, where the PM cannot find a Service Agreement/MoU/Contract with the Vendor, he/she need to contact the company’s concerned legal department to understand about any existing agreements with the vendor or if the organization needs to enter into a new agreement with the vendor prior to entering into an SOW discussion with the vendor.
Last but not the least, any SOW, whether it’s written by a customer or a vendor, need to the reviewed and agreed by both the customer and the vendor organizations from a legal perspective, and mutual corrections that are required need to made and then need to the formally signed by the authorized signatories of the both the parties to ensure that both the customer and vendor are now bound by a strong legal document before they start implementation of their first project promising harmonious partnership for years to come.Once we get that, we start the project under constant monitoring...
Hello there, Scope of work is a guide to know the boundry to the work needs to be done.If it is not worked out during the start of the job, which brings many risks towards the time, cost, quality, resources, reputation etc.. because all these contributes to have a sucessful project, so the mother of winning these factors is the scope. Most challenging part here in this is saying "NO" to the activity which needes work by the customer because one YES to the work which is not agreed in scope will bring many constraints to the above said factors. Next challenging part is bringing all the requirements in fashion that it should run you free of risk to the maximum during initiation of project because it needs lots of mind works and expertise.These are all basic but main things of SCOPE HANDLING. Thanks
SOW - Scope of Work with respect to project management.
At the initial stage before starting the project, PMO ( Project Management Office) Team have to conduct requirement analysis and draft scope of work document which will be awarded for tender to attract vendors. Based on the Scope of work (baseline) further design and analysis will be carried out as initial stage of the project BBP (business blue print)
any deviation or additional scope of work during the realization and testing phase will lead to additional cost and time.
Hope you got your question answered.
Depending upon the context, SOW can be Scope of Work or Statement of Work. This is part of the RFP/RFQ (Request for Proposal or Request for Quotation) document which describes, in as much detail as required, the work which is to be carried out, under a specific project or tender.
As a experienced personnel, when you work on a particular project, your role is performing part or full SOW. In performing the SOW, one gains relevant experience and knowledge in the respective field. At times, SOW stretches one knowledge and new learning need to be gained for performing the work. SOW also helps to monitor and control the project. Once SOW is contractually agreed, any changes to it, will necessitates the revision to the terms of project contract and has implication on time and cost.
In this way project personnel or engineers, gains experience and knowledge, while undertaking a particular SOW.
basically, your team must be knowledgeable in SOW at least you may give them some ideas about the work, so that the projects must go smoothly without any problems in implementation. need they to understand about the work they do.
if, the work is beyond the SOW, we can continuity do it work and inform the PM for the additional works. to claim the additional cost.
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