ITMG624 W3: Project Charter and Statement of Work
Please list each question and answer each question below when posting your initial response.
What are the steps of developing an SOW?
What are the common problems in writing an SOW?
Discuss the keys to managing changes to the SOW
What are the steps of developing an SOW?
The following are the steps of developing an SOW;
Introduce the project; the project and stakeholders are introduced in this stage. It is also essential to ensure clients understand that SOW is a formal agreement.
Define the vision; a statement of work should include the purpose or vision of the project.
Set the project requirements; indicate the main project requirements. By referring back to the mission, indicate problems to be solved.
Define the scope; the scope is defined after defining the vision and indicating the project requirement.
Set the project deadline; set start and end dates of the project
Allocate essential resources; allocating enough and right resources
Create the schedule; after defining scope, start and end date, available resources, one can establish a timeline of the project.
Indicates the payments terms and due dates; just like any other type of agreement, exchange of money and things is involved, thus it is necessary to show how work delivered is going to be compensated (terms of payment and due dates)
Include special requirements; this could comprise special security measures (Smithwick & Dodd, 2018). For instance, who has access to the project or who is authorized to access databases of the key information.
Accept and sign; when all the above nine points have been defined, thoroughly read and understood by both parties, the documents can be signed.
What are the common problems in writing an SOW?
Inconsistency of a requirement; occurs as a result of careless writing, causing inconsistencies in SOW requirement.
Calling a requirement by different names; calling the same requirements by different names at various places in the SOW, making it hard to examine if the description is one or two requirements
Conflicting or unreasonable schedules; schedules are a key aspect of any contract (Martin, 2013). Timing requirements happens both in work requirement descriptions and delivery requirements descriptions, and these requirements should be reviewed to ensure they do not conflict.
Incomplete description of a requirement; this happens when the SOW writer tends to assume that the contractor will understand a requirement, thus failing to describe it fully.
Discuss the keys to managing changes to the SOW
To handle changes adequately, tools and standard processes must be identified to document and monitor changes with the project. Two major tools are used to manage project change: the change order form and the SOW change order tracker.
Change order form; is usually tailored to achieve specific organization change management requirements.
SOW change order tracker; together with SF30, the SOW change order tracker helps deal with changes (Mathein, 2019). This tool enables tracking both unapproved and approved changes to the project by gathering them in one document. Having information in one collective location helps to manage changes effectively.
References Smithwick, J., & Dodd, J. (2018, September). Developing an Effective Scope of Work (SOW). In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGUCCS Annual Conference (pp. 77-80).
Mathein, E. (2019). Put it in writing. Operations Management.
Martin, M. G. (2013). The government manager's guide to the statement of work. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Incorporated.
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