MONITORING AND CONTROL STAGE (SCOPE) : VALIDATE SCOPE

Validate Scope is the process of formalizing or confirming the final acceptance of the completed project deliverables in order to increase chances of the product, service or result acceptance.

The inputs to use are:

• Project management plan whereby the formal acceptance of the deliverable as a basis for comparison has been stated in the scope baseline and how to obtain the accepted deliverable has been explained in the scope management plan
• Requirements documentation that lists all the requirements needed for the product and the project along with their acceptance criteria
• Requirements traceability matrix that links all the requirements to the origin and traces them throughout the project lifecycle
• Verified deliverables that will be checked for correctness in the Control Quality process (to be discussed)
• Work performance data that includes the degree of agreement with requirements, number of nonconformities or number of validation cycles performed in a period of time

The process can be done by:

• Inspection or sometimes it can be called as auditing or review that involves measuring, examining and validating activities to determine if they meet the requirements and product or project acceptance criteria
• Group decision-making technique whereby through groups, the conclusion can be reached when the validation is performed by the project team and stakeholders. The conclusion can be decided by either everyone in the group (unanimity), by more than 50% of the members of the group (majority), by largest block in the group (plurality) or by one person who makes the decision for the group (dictatorship)

The outputs of the process are 

• Accepted deliverables approved or acknowledged formally by the customer or sponsor, 
• Change requests when the unaccepted deliverables that require a change documented along with their reasons for nonacceptance,  
• Work performance information that provides the updates or progress of the project like which deliverable has started, which is in progress, which has finished, and which has been accepted 
• Project documents updates that provide the status of the deliverable ready to be approved by the customer or sponsor in form of signatures.

References:

PMI (2013). A Guide to the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide 5^th Ed.) USA, Project Management Institute

https://www.slideshare.net/MohammadKhan43/project-scope-management-2-31432611