Define Project Scope and Requirements in Salesforce

In the intricate world of project management, defining the scope, understanding requirements, and managing stakeholders are pivotal steps that dictate the success of any project. This blog offers a deep dive into these fundamental aspects, equipping you with the knowledge to navigate the complexities of project development. By reading this blog, you will gain insights into:

• Learn the importance of outlining a project’s scope and identifying its requirements for success.
• Discover how personas serve as a crucial design tool in aligning project outcomes with user needs.
• Understand the framework for identifying and categorizing customer needs.
• Explore the various types of constraints that can impact project design and delivery.
• Recognize the role of stakeholders in a project and the importance of their early involvement.
• Get acquainted with the RACI matrix as a tool for clarifying roles and responsibilities within project management.

Let’s get started!

Project Scope and Requirements

A project scope outlines a project’s aspects, including all the related activities, resources, timelines, and deliverables, and lists a clear distinction between the project’s boundaries and what lies outside of it. All this detailed information is documented in a scope statement. 

Requirements are the items or tasks that must be completed to meet the stakeholder’s expectations and ensure the project’s success.

Personas

A persona is a design tool that describes a fictional person representing a user who will use the product or service being designed. Therefore, it is essential to identify persona or personas when defining the project.

Key Concepts and Features

• Persona creation usually starts in the second phase of the software development lifecycle – the Define phase.
• The users are kept at the center of the design process. A persona represents a group of users clustered based on shared behavior, goals, motivations, and demographics.
• Meaningful personas are archetypes or character sketches informed by qualitative and quantitative user research.

There are four different perspectives on personas:

• Goal-directed Personas: examine the process and workflow users prefer to utilize to achieve their goals when using your product or service.
• Role-based Personas: are goal-oriented, focus on behavior, and are massively data-driven.
• Engaging Personas: the designers actively involve themselves in the personas’ lives to produce involvement and insight.
• Fictional Personas: the team makes assumptions based upon past interactions with the user base and products to deliver a picture of what a typical user looks like. This can be deeply flawed.

Jobs to Be Done

This theory provides a framework for defining, categorizing, capturing, and organizing all the customers’ needs. Using this framework, product teams can understand the jobs their customers are trying to get done and the measure of success.

Key Concepts and Features

The company must first define all its customers before defining the customer needs. The customers can be best grouped into three categories: The job executor, the product lifecycle support team, and the buyer.

The types of jobs that the job executor, the product lifecycle support team and the buyer are trying to get done can be categorized as:

• Core Functional Job
• Related Job
• Emotional Job
• Consumption Chain Job
• Purchase Decision Job

The customer’s job-to-be-done is the anchor point for “where” to create value. The customer must discover the “needs” of the customer to cater to the desired outcomes.

Constraints

Design constraints are the limits placed on design and include imposed limitations that cannot be controlled and limitations that are self-imposed to improve the design. With constraints, the possibilities that narrow the scope of the design options can be eliminated. For example, Budget constraint.

Types of Constraints

1. Technical Constraints: These constraints are related to software performance, reliability, maintainability, integration, etc., and hardware constraints such as device size, connection speeds, peripherals, or touch-enabled screens.
2. Business Constraints: These constraints include time, budget, and resources. When clients compose briefs, commercial constraints are featured as, “We need A deliverable, in B amount of time, for C cost.”
3. Design Constraint: These constraints include brand or content guidelines, design standards, quality governance, and accessibility.
4. Non-Functional Constraints: These constraints relate to qualities the design should possess – simple, easy-to-use, etc. 
5. Compliance Constraints: These include laws, standards, or regulations that designers must adhere to.

Stakeholders

A stakeholder is an individual or group with interest in an organization and can either affect or be affected by the business. Stakeholders influence the project’s success. Therefore, it is imperative to include stakeholders early in the design process. The team must align on the details in the design brief before prototypes or concepts are sketched. For example, leadership overseeing the project.

Types of Stakeholders

• Customers
• Employees
• Investors
• Suppliers and Vendors
• Communities
• Governments

RACI Matrix

The RACI matrix – also known as the responsibility assignment matrix, outlines the roles of the stakeholders. It is used in project management to eliminate confusion by identifying who’s doing what at a granular level. RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed.

Use Case

A Business Analyst has been aligned with an application development project. Phase two of the project is starting, and the Business Analyst must outline the roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders involved in the project lifecycle. The project team comprises designers, developers, a sales enablement manager, and other key stakeholders. How can the Business Analyst ensure the task responsibility on the project is assigned correctly?

Solution: RACI Matrix

Reason: The RACI matrix – also known as the responsibility assignment matrix, sets clear expectations about project roles and responsibilities. It is used in project management to eliminate confusion by identifying who’s doing what at a granular level. RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed.

Summing Up

In wrapping up, mastering the art of defining project scope, understanding requirements, and effectively managing stakeholders is crucial for any project manager looking to lead their projects to success. The insights shared in this blog are designed to equip you with the tools and knowledge necessary to navigate the complexities of project management with confidence.  

For those eager to dive deeper into project management and expand their expertise, particularly within the Salesforce ecosystem, saasguru offers an unparalleled opportunity. By joining our community on Slack, you’ll gain access to a vibrant network of professionals and experts, all sharing a common goal of growth and excellence. 

Additionally, our online Salesforce bootcamps provide hands-on training and real-world project experience, ensuring you not only learn the theoretical aspects of project management but also apply them in practical settings.

Embrace this chance to elevate your project management skills and become a leader in the Salesforce domain!