Documenting the purpose and scope of a project is an essential part of the Project Life Cycle. It sets the boundaries early on and gives a clear indication of what and why the project is needed. By defining this it ensures that everyone involved in the project can see its purpose and what is needed for that purpose to be achieved.

This document can go through several revisions during the Project Life Cycle Initial Stage as investigations are completed. The scope may need to be reduced to satisfy the budget or increased to achieve the purpose. It provides a documented baseline for what needs to be done and is agreed by both the Client and the Project Management team so all sign from the same song sheet.

The scope is created from the list of Project Objectives and is a pre-cursor for requirements gathering which goes into far greater detail. If after this document is signed off the Client wants to add additional objectives that have not been costed then that is easily achieved using the Change Management process.

You can also list those objectives that are outside the scope of the project. This could be due to budget or time restraints. These can be listed as future enhancements or Phases that can be managed once the initial project is completed. By detailing them it influences any architectural design decisions to be made so that the new objectives or Phases can be introduced with ease to the existing application without loss of performance or a complete technical re-write.