Change Happens When Delivering a Project
There are many competing factors when delivering change with a Project. Not only do you have many competing stakeholders with their different needs, biases, history in the organization and more, but you have competing constraints too.
The triple constraint of Scope, Schedule and Cost is impacted frequently on a project. If scope changes a little, it might impact how long it takes to deliver it. And that might cost more. Balancing these is an essential part of being a good Project Manager.
Use Change Requests to Keep Change under Control
If you’re studying or working in Project Management this year, know the broad Change Control process.
So, so many project managers never even outline their Change Control approach – or worse – they confuse it with modern Organizational Change Management (transitioning a product to operations or BAU).
The good part is, you get to decide (with your stakeholders) your project’s Change Control approach and you outline this in your Change Management Plan.
YES this works for Agile too, but it’s usually just a single line as the Product Owner decides on Scope Changes with the Product Backlog, and they understand and absorb the impact to their Schedule (Cost is often fixed).
Make sure you know it. Make sure you write it down.
Then deliver value and win. The typical Change approach might be:
- A Stakeholder raises a change to the Scope, Schedule, Cost, Resources (or any other baselined part of the project).
- We note that proposed change in the Change Log.
- We analyze the impact of the change to our project Cost, Schedule, Scope, and any other necessary impact.
- We take this information to the Change Control Board, or the approver. This might be multiple people or just one person (i.e. a Project Sponsor or Product Owner).
- We communicate the outcome of the change to the necessary stakeholders (Approved, Deferred, Rejected).
- We update the Change Log with the outcome and take the necessary change action.
See more Project Management Picture Concepts:
- How The Cost of Quality Increases On Your Project
- How to Measure Business Value for Your Project (NPV, ROI and more!)
- Scrum Roles & Responsibilities
- The Change Control Process in Project Management
- Prototypes in a Waterfall or Agile Project
- Agile Estimating Techniques – Planning Poker and More
- Good versus Bad Project Management
- Benchmarking: How To Do It
- Project Management Office (PMO) Types
- Project Benefit Types – Tangible and Intangible
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