The Jonah Group

• Overview
• Full Service Development
• Project Initiation
• Project Scope
• Requirements Analysis
• Interactive Design
• Technical Design
• Development Assistance
• Website Management

Project Scope Definition

Is this you?

• Your project has many feature requirements, but lacks a clear path to deliver them
• As a development or project manager, you are having trouble getting clear directions from business stakeholders on system or website feature priority
• You need to provide accurate cost estimates and delivery dates for a website or application
• You need a neutral third-party to resolve roadblocks in your project's progress

Let The Jonah Group help you define your project scope and estimated costs.

What is it?

All projects have many competing business and technical requirements, a list of feature requirements that cannot meet cost constraints, and limited development resources. Managing project scope is critical to ensuring a project's success. The process of feature prioritization must take into account the business need, technical complexity, risk, and cost.

The Jonah Group will work with you and your key management, marketing, and technical stakeholders to define business goals, system features, and technical contraints. Through a series of workshops and meetings, we will facilitate the definition of each feature's business priority, implementation difficulty, and risk to the overall delivery schedule of the project. We will work with the project manager and delivery team to get high-level estimates of effort for feature delivery.

The end result is a Phased Delivery Project Plan with well defined phases, milestone dates, and a list of prioritized features that will be implemented in each phase. This plan establishes a baseline which will deliver critical requirements in a predictable timeframe and allows tracking and management of future changes. Additionally, there will be a Vision document which details the overall reason for the project to exist (user needs, feature requirements) and the phased plan to guide the project's delivery.

Once the overall Delivery Plan is complete, take advantage of our Requirements Analysis services to flesh out the details of your first phase of development.

Deliverables

• Prioritized Feature Matrix. The detailed list of feature needs and requirements that are prioritized and have been assigned both implementation difficulty and development risk estimates. The features will be prioritized into initial baseline features that have been committed to be delivered as well as future features.
• Phased Milestone Plan. The Phased Milestone Plan takes the results of the Prioritized Feature Matrix and creates a set of phases with specific, assigned features to be delivered in each phase. The Milestone Plan acts as a roadmap for future development and guides the ongoing change management process.
• Vision Document. The Vision Document is a critical document which communicates to all stakeholders the overall project problem and solution by defining the needs of the users and the features of the system. The Vision document describes the rationale for which features are most important and how the solution will be delivered over time.
• Project Risks and Issues. As a result of the workshops and prioritization process, many project risks and issues will be discovered. This document will summarize these and will allow ongoing risk management during the project's delivery.

Key benefits

• Clarity. Having a milestone map with phases, features to be delivered, and estimated delivery dates makes it clear to all stakeholders involved in your project on what has been prioritized and when features will be delivered.
• Buy-in. Incorporating input and concerns from all stakeholders into a managed plan increases buy-in and support.
• Predictability. Business needs, priorities, and development estimates of complexity and risk, drive out a reasonably accurate baseline plan, with a lower risk of delay.
• Flexibility. Once a baseline plan and milestone map have been created, it is easier to incorporate future changes without undue team stress or schedule risk.

Why Jonah?

• The Jonah Group acts as the neutral third-party that can resolve any roadblocks in your team's progress.
• The Jonah Group has many years of experience in delivering complex websites and applications on-time and on-budget.