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What is the Scope of work in Data analysis?
A document for better project
Let us first see What is Scope of work is?
The scope of work document is an agreement between two parties (between Stakeholders and Data analysts) about what needs to be done in a project. Scope of work helps teams successfully implement a project with a 360-degree view of the project.
What is the need for Scope of Work (SOW)?
The purpose of data analytics projects is to complete business tasks that are useful to stakeholders. Creating an SOW helps ensure that everyone involved, from analysts and engineers to managers and stakeholders, shares an understanding of what those business goals are and the plan to achieve them. Clarifying requirements and setting expectations are two of the most important parts of a project. Recall the first phase of the Data Analysis Process — asking questions.
As you ask more and more questions to clarify requirements, goals, data sources, stakeholders, and any other relevant information, the SOW will help you formalize everything by recording all the answers and details. In this context, the word “ask” means two things. Preparing to write an SOW is about asking questions to learn the necessary information about the project, but it’s also about clarifying and defining what you need to accomplish and what the limits or boundaries of “asking” are. After all, if you can’t distinguish between the business issues you are and aren’t responsible for, then it’s difficult to know what success means!
What is a good SOW?
There’s no standard format for an SOW. They may differ significantly from organization to organization, or from project to project. However, they all have a few foundational pieces of content in common.
Deliverables: What work is being done and what things are being created as a result of this project? After the project is complete, what do you expect to deliver to the stakeholders? Be specific here. Will you be collecting data for this project? How much or how long?
Milestones: This is closely related to your timeline. What are the main milestones for the progress of your project? How do you know when a given part of the project is considered complete?
Timeline: Your timeline will be closely tied to the milestones you create for your project. A timeline is a way to map out expectations of how long each step of the process should take. The timeline should be specific enough to help everyone involved decide whether the project is on track. When will deliveries be completed? How long do you expect the project to be completed? If all goes according to plan, how long do you expect each component of the project to take? When can we expect to achieve each milestone?
Reports: Good SOWs also set boundaries for how and when you will provide status updates to stakeholders. How and how often will you communicate progress with stakeholders and sponsors? Will progress be reported weekly? Monthly? When are milestones completed? What information will the status reports contain?
As a minimum, each SOW should answer all relevant questions in the above areas. Please note that these areas may vary depending on the project. But at its core, an SOW document should always serve the same purpose by containing information that is specific, relevant, and accurate. If something changes in the project, your SOW should reflect those changes.
Thank you for reading.
Have a nice day!!
References — Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate
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