Project Management: Achieving Competitive Advantage, Fifth Edition

Conceptual Development

1. LO 5.2 Understand how conceptual development serves as a critical first stage in scope management.

Conceptual development is the process that addresses project objectives by finding the best ways to meet them.5 To create an accurate sense of conceptual development for a project, the project management team must collect data and develop several pieces of information. Key steps in information development are:

• Problem or need statement. Scope management for a project begins with a statement of goals: why there is a need in search of a solution, what the underlying problem is, and what the project intends to do. For example, consider the following need statement from a fictitious county:

  A 2017 report from the Maryland State ...