Scope

In this episode, Ricardo emphasizes the need for change in project environments while cautioning against modifying the project's primary purpose or DNA. He underlines that while adapting and evolving is essential, changing fundamental goals can lead to confusion and a lack of focus.

In this week's episode, Ricardo addresses the risks of the Diderot Effect. For many, this effect is directly related to consumption bias. However, it is perfectly applied also when we add something to our project, and that something triggers a series of new features causing control to be completely lost. This effect impacts budget, deadlines, and team, among many other factors.

In this week's episode, Ricardo talks about the Round-Robin Brainstorming technique. Ricardo explains that with this technique, everyone participates by analyzing, confirming, and questioning the other participants, and he makes an analogy between a football championship, where all teams play each other.

In this week's episode, Ricardo talks about the Problem Statement. He explains that we often receive a problem with a solution from our customers. The given solution is not always the correct one; before thinking about how to implement the solution, we need to be clearer about what problem our project is trying to solve.

In this week's episode, Ricardo shares a concept he saw in a Design Thinking course he did recently: The Ebb and Flow of Ideation. Dev Patnaik introduces this straightforward and effective concept in the Product Development Best Practices Report. It is centered on the concept that better ideas are interspersed with absurd ones during ideation, and a wild idea is the fuel to generate new brilliant ones.

In this episode, Ricardo explains the fundamental difference between the scope you define for the project, the procurement documents you may use to source products and services, and the requirements you identify to set the boundaries of the work you need to do. It is essential to highlight that Ricardo does not restrict these documents to waterfall project management.

In this episode, Ricardo discusses the characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of more detailed planning versus more generic and agile planning. It also presents the 3 criteria that it usually uses to define how well it generalizes and how detailed it is.

In this episode, Ricardo discusses how you can decompose a program into the respective projects and their components. He uses the example of a Course or Degree being divided into disciplines and classes. In the end, Ricardo addresses a fundamental question: Is a class a routine or a work package? Listen to the episode to know the answer.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the relationship between the risks and the project scope. Not just the clarity of the scope, but also its amplitude, contribute to the amount of risk that must be managed.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the types of contracts of the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC). These contracts are widely used in engineering projects and published as books. Ricardo explains that the contracts are well prepared, bringing best practices that can be applied to various types of projects. Visit the site of the federation at http://fidic.org/

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the concept of Rolling Wave Planning, which deals with the progressive elaboration of the project scope. He presents the pros and cons of this technique, giving answers to questions such as: "How do I get the detail work that will happen in the 2nd week of the 14th month in my project?"

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) Dictionary. He explains that this document may be called the work packages instruction manual and gives tips on how to plan well your dictionary.

In this podcast, listen Ricardo's opinion on the level of detail of the project scope. How much detail we have to pursue? What is a good size for a work package?

In this podcast, Ricardo continues to talk about how can we minimize scope changes in a project. He suggests another three other control measures: the formalization, the phasing of the project and the rolling wave planning.