The Importance of the Scope Doc
Instructional designers, this is for you: get good at creating Scope Docs.
A strong foundation in the form of a scope document is the key to any successful instructional design project. Don’t believe me? Think of issues that can arise without an advance plan:
The project sponsor wants to speed the deadline up two weeks.
A developer who is supposed to grant you access to a training environment isn’t responding to emails.
A SME asks you to include 5 more topics in the course at the last minute.
If you have a clear scope before launching a project, your response to any of these scenarios can be “I’m sorry, that wasn’t a part of the plan. I’ve attached the approved scope to this email. But here are some ideas I have for how we can resolve this issue!” (Always present solutions like adding on another phase of a project, bringing in a new SME, or pushing back the original deadline, for example).
A scope document at the start of a training project is proactive. Seek out all of the information needed to succeed and get it approved before you do any work.
I like to include:
Background
Audience
Stakeholders
Resources
Environments (for technical training)
Objectives/Content
Assessment/Evaluation
Deliverables
Milestones/Dates
When changes come up in a project, which they inevitably do, it’s best not to say a hard no but give alternatives. You can say “Yes, we can do that, but it will take more time/money than originally anticipated,” or “how about we publish what we have and include this new last-minute content in a later phase of the project?”
The scope document prevents you from being taken advantage of, or being blamed for problems outside of your control. That’s why having a solid template you use over and over again is so important. If you aren’t the project manager, you should still try to find out all of this information for yourself before diving in.
Tim Slade calls this the Project Plan and he has a great template on his website.
The moral of the story: don’t start work on a project until your scope has been approved by the person holding the purse strings. The scope will be your sacred text that you refer back to again and again and again for guidance.
