Episode 446: Project Scope Management - The Secret to Project Success (Free)

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Disruptive business models, technological progress and intense competition force your customers to continuously innovate. Clients naturally demand that you deliver high-quality projects involving complex, ever-changing scope at tight budgets and within compressed timelines. Is this challenging? Absolutely! Innovative, effective scope management is a must for project success. Listen in as we discuss the successful scope management techniques from across continents.

This interview with Karthik Ramamurthy was recorded at the PMI® Global Conference 2019 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. We discuss his findings into how project scope management will make or break your project.

You will discover how ineffective requirements gathering, poor scope definition, gold plating, and uncontrolled creep inevitably lead to project failure. And to counteract this, we analyze, adapt, and apply seven proven scope management techniques to increase the probability of project success.

Project Management Professional (PMP)® Exam: PMP Exam prep

Episode Transcript

Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.

Podcast Introduction

Cornelius Fichtner: In this episode of The Project Management Podcast™, we look at several successful scope management techniques from across the continents.

Podcast

Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome back to The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com. I am Cornelius Fichtner.

And we are coming to you live from the 2019 Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Conference in Philadelphia. And looking out the window, Philadelphia is a really pretty town. There is some wonderful architecture next to us. And when I say “us,” I am welcoming Karthik Ramamurthy back to the program.

Hello, Karthik!

Karthik Ramamurthy: Good afternoon, Cornelius, how are you?

Cornelius Fichtner: I am doing very well. How is your conference going because the day you flew in, you picked something up on the flight. Are you feeling better?

Karthik Ramamurthy: Definitely better but as you know in life, you take the rough with the smooth. It’s been a rough week grating my teeth to finish my conference session tomorrow and then I’ll be off to Chennai on 30 hours of flying to be back home with my family.

Cornelius Fichtner: Woah, okay! I have a six-hour flight ahead of me on Tuesday. So alright!

Your presentation that you will be giving tomorrow is “Secret Sauce to Project Success – Seven Scope Management Techniques from Several Countries.” Now there is a little bit of a giveaway in here “Secret Sauce to Project Success.” So this must be related to the book that we talked about last year “Say Yes to Project Success”?

Karthik Ramamurthy: It is, Cornelius. As we spoke about last year, my book had 52 specific practical techniques for project success. So my presentation tomorrow is going to be seven of those techniques specifically pertaining to scope management.

Cornelius Fichtner: Okay. Before we go there, I see in your presentation slides, there’s the about the speaker bio. The first one reads: “Sports broadcaster for the 2003 World Cup.” What?

Karthik Ramamurthy: It wasn’t the football World Cup. I’d be much more wildly popular if it was the football world cup.

Cornelius Fichtner: So it must have been cricket?

Karthik Ramamurthy: Yes!

Cornelius Fichtner: Okay!

Karthik Ramamurthy: Yes, this was for the Cricket World Cup held in South Africa.

Cornelius Fichtner: Okay and which matches were you broadcasting on?

Karthik Ramamurthy: So interestingly, this was internet kind of broadcast even then.

Cornelius Fichtner: Okay, yes!

Karthik Ramamurthy: In 2003, not many people had access to the internet or phones that could show them the scores. So we sat in the studio in Chennai with the volume turned off on the matches on the actual commentary and did live commentary ourselves. People could call in to the system via [cellphone] and listen to the World Cup game. It was a very popular service.

Cornelius Fichtner: Wonderful, wonderful! Alright! So let’s get into your presentation and the way you get in to your presentation or will get in to it tomorrow is you start by doing a poll in the audience. PMI is really has really up their technical game here so you can include a poll and people can vote anonymously. And the question of the poll is: “What is the impact of an effective scope management on project success? Please vote: A. Very high, B. High, C. Low, or D. Very low.” What do you expect the outcome will be?

Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.