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Scoping

The scop­ing process works along­side our dis­cov­ery kit and is com­prised of dif­fer­ent ac­tiv­i­ties we use to build our un­der­stand­ing and ini­ti­ate the cre­ation of arte­facts. The scop­ing process has the fol­low­ing phases: Understand, observe, ideate, pro­to­type, show­case. These phases are not lin­ear but can be re­turned to at any point if re­quired.

Uncovering the pro­ject

Scoping re­sults in a li­brary of arte­facts which serve as the blue­print for de­vel­op­ment.

These arte­facts, such as wire­frames, user flow di­a­grams and the re­quire­ments back­log, cat­a­logue the pro­ject from fron­tend in­ter­face to the func­tion­al­ity be­neath. Typically, scop­ing is un­der­taken with the ex­pec­ta­tion that it will pro­ceed into de­vel­op­ment, but scop­ing can also take place in iso­la­tion.

If you must de­velop a busi­ness case in­ter­nally or ex­ter­nally to in­vestors, then pro­ject scop­ing will give you all the ma­te­ri­als you need to val­i­date the pro­ject with stake­hold­ers and progress.

Once the busi­ness case is ap­proved, re­turn to us to con­tinue the jour­ney or take the arte­facts cre­ated dur­ing scope to other de­vel­op­ment com­pa­nies. With our process and own­er­ship of the IP, you are in the dri­ver’s seat and get to choose how and when to progress.

The Process

The scop­ing process works along­side our dis­cov­ery kit and is com­prised of dif­fer­ent ac­tiv­i­ties we use to build our un­der­stand­ing and ini­ti­ate the cre­ation of arte­facts.

The scop­ing process has the fol­low­ing phases: Un­der­stand, ob­serve, ideate, pro­to­type, show­case. These phases are not lin­ear but can be re­turned to at any point if re­quired.

During the un­der­stand phase, we un­pack the prob­lem state­ment and un­cover the re­quire­ments of the pro­ject. Following this, the ob­ser­va­tion phase chal­lenges our as­sump­tions, draft­ing per­sonas and get­ting to know the end user.

Our de­sign­ers will then be­gin ideat­ing on the user ex­pe­ri­ence and user in­ter­face in the form of sketches and wire­frames. Finally, pro­to­typ­ing crys­tallises these de­signs into arte­facts which rep­re­sent the pro­posed ap­pli­ca­tion. There is a show­case at the end of scope which in­cludes de­liv­ery of the fi­nal es­ti­ma­tions for de­vel­op­ment time and cost.

The Benefits

A de­tailed scope pro­vides enor­mous ben­e­fits by not only high­light­ing the goals of the pro­ject but by un­cov­er­ing risks and as­sump­tions. The earlier these things can be mit­i­gated; the smoother and more cost-ef­fec­tive de­vel­op­ment will be.

Many of our clients find that the scop­ing process pro­vides them a great deal of new in­sight not only about soft­ware de­vel­op­ment in gen­eral, but about their busi­ness and the at­ti­tudes of their users.

The processes we use dur­ing scope are ap­plic­a­ble to a range of pro­jects, not just those with an in­tended soft­ware out­come, so can be used by our clients when tack­ling any other chal­lenge.

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