Validate Scope Process

Validate Scope falls under the cross section of Scope Management Knowledge Area and Monitoring and Controlling Process Group. Some books and mentors like to teach this after the Control Scope process.

Validate Scope process is what happens when you are done doing everything you had to do. As a Project Manager, the next logical step would be to gather all the stakeholders (client included) and have them review the deliverables and provide their acceptance. It should be noted that these Deliverables are ‘Validated’ deliverables that have already been through the Control Quality process. Refer to this article where we have talked about the difference between Validated and Accepted deliverables.

So once the review or inspection is done there could be two outputs,
1. either the deliverables are formally accepted by the stakeholders
2. or the deliverables aren’t accepted leading to change requests (back to the whole change management grind!)

‘Formally accepted’ in point 1 signifies that you have written confirmation from all the stakeholders that the deliverables match the agreed upon project requirements. The main reason for the existence of the Validate Scope process is to get formal acceptance on the completed project deliverables.

It should be noted that there are several deliverables (remember even your Project Management Plan is a deliverable!) and since all of them need to be accepted by the stakeholders, Validate Scope isn’t a process that is done once during the end but a process that is performed throughout the life of the project.

Imagine a project with 200 deliverables and 2 years duration, would you wait till the end to perform the Validate Scope process? Even the product of the project can be validated time and again partially.

Check more articles on Scope Management