Determining Your Scopes & Scales
After meetings, interviews, more research, and continual iterations of “how might we…” statements, I found myself stuck. I was in a loop trying to find the missing element our team was looking for. Were we too broad? Was there enough data? Did we fail to define the situation or problem?
Maybe, but no.
After many nights, we began to feel confident with our research, analysis, and application. Our data was good, and our project reflected well by presentation, but there was a mistake we made that could have strengthened our research and outcomes a lot more: defining our scope and scale.
Definition
Why does defining these matter? Well, first let’s clarify what these two terms mean. Taking inspiration from Abby Covert’s book on information architecture, How to Make Sense of Anything, she defines the terms as such.
By defining your scope for a project, you are assigning what are the constraints, what resources you may need, what problems you’re trying to solve, and what outcomes are hoped to be achieved.
Based on–or throughout defining your scope–your scale defines the size and complexity of the project. For example, a small-scale project may only require a few team members and a short timeline. A larger-scale project may require a larger team, more time, and a more complex process.
Applying your Scope
Your scope is an essential part of your planning phase. It details a clear direction and focus for your team, and prevents project misunderstandings. As I stated prior, your scope outlines:
- The problems
- The constraints
- The resources
- The goals
The Problems
Consider user needs, business goals, and constraints when defining the problems. Your problem should be clear and concise to minimize misunderstandings and set expectations during development.
Instead of saying “Our website needs to be improved to increase user engagement,” clarify the problem by stating, “Our website’s product pages have a high drop-off rate, indicating users are not finding what they need.”
The sentence now provides clear information about the focus (the product pages' high drop-off rate) and pain points (users are not finding what they need).
The Constraints
Constraints are often analyzed as the limitations your project has, such as the budget, time, and resources.
Knowing what your constraints are in a project helps team productivity more efficiently knowing exactly what your approach will look like.
The Resources
What technology is being utilized? How much money is given for the level of research we may need to conduct? How large of a team does this problem require?
Your resources are an essential player when it comes to the technicality of the project.
The Goals
Finally, your goals. Or, as I like to say, ‘desired outcomes.’
Your goals are what your team should reference throughout the entire production of the project to ensure reasoning, prioritization, and overall understanding of what is to be accomplished.
Applying your Scale
Understanding your level of scale is key to planning and allocating the right time and resources to a project. This can be dependant on elements such as the relative size to be handled and meaning of the project.
Size
Your project’s size may mean how large the impact will be, or it can mean how extensive or iterative the process is. Additionally, the size of the project will heavily vary on the size of the company.
For example, updating the notification system for a smaller company may be simple and small in scale, but imagine how extensive that design decision would be for a company such as Apple.
Meaning
Meaning is the significance, understanding, or importance of an intention. If the scale of your project is small, that does not mean it has lesser meaning. In worst cases, an undefined scale can offset a project’s timeline and meaning
A project whose scale focuses on a minority, such as those with disabilities, may have a huge meaning to ensure accessibility for their service/product, even if it means changing the language or readability of a button or banner. So, when identifying the size of your scale, it’s important to know who you are trying to reach and how important their agreement or satisfaction is.
The meaning we intend to communicate doesn’t matter if it makes no sense, or the wrong sense, to the people we want to reach
(How to Make Sense of Anything, 2014).
Wrapping Up
I hope through this reading, you not only understood the meanings of your scopes and scales but can now feel confident to apply them more thoughtfully to your next project.
If you are interested in learning some of the inspirations and principles I learned from Abby Covert’s book, How to Make Sense of Anything, I highly recommend giving it a read. She offers an additional free resource guide to her book on her website here.
Citations
Covert, A., & Fenton, N. (2017). Chapter 2: State your Intent. In How to make sense of any mess (pp. 37–38). essay, Columbia.
Covert, A., & Fenton, N. (2017). Chapter 3: Face Reality. In How to make sense of any mess (p. 59). essay, Columbia.
