Project Change Management
An Overview of Coping with Change for Non-Specialists
These changes will originate from changes in the user requirements and/or difficulties in realising the user specification in practice. One of the most effective methods of dealing with the need to amend projects is to have a project change procedure. Although this procedure will not removal all risks, it will enable some changes to be made with minimal disruption and slippage.
Change Management Procedure
The change management plan is a definition of the formal process for making changes to the project’s original scope. It generally involves redefining existing objectives and deliverables or specifying new project objectives and deliverables. The procedure for changes is as follows:
Change requests should initially be awarded a change priority classification code based on a set of standards. These can be either simply alphanumerical, or descriptive such as Critical, High Importance, Medium Importance et cetera.
After the change request evaluation, the project manager should schedule a change decision meeting. Participants in this meeting should include the project sponsors, the change review committee, the project manger, the originator of the request, as well as any other interested and affected stakeholders.
The project manager will present the proposed change and the results of the evaluation, including a copy of the proposed project plan illustrating the impact of the change. The requestor may choose to speak on behalf of the change and the evaluators may also choose to defend their evaluation, if necessary. The project manager should only become significantly involve if the evaluation indicates that the proposed change would have a significant effect on the overall project in terms of finance, scheduling, or the eventual effect on the project’s service or product.
Implementation of Change in Projects
In all but very minor cases, the later that a project change is made, the more difficult it will be to implement without significant repercussions. The ramifications of the change will also vary proportionally with the size of the change. It may be that minor adjustments here and there may have a negligible effect, but a significant change in scope may set a long project back several weeks, months, or even years.
In short, a change management procedure for any given project should include, but not necessarily be limited to the following:
- Identifying the need for change.
- Change recommendation.
- Analysis of the feasibility of change.
- Steering committee approval.
- Project sponsor approval.
- Implementing the change.
- Continue constant review.
The final task is to communicate the revised change management plan to all project team members and stakeholders, explaining the rationale where resistance is encountered. It is also important at this point to ensure that the minutes of meetings, decisions reached and agreements made are documented and retained.
Change should be expected in any given project, but, as discussed in this article, is very much a manageable issue. In change management, it is important to understand the mechanisms for managing change and to prioritise the requested amenedment.
Once the procedure for change has been mapped carefully, the adjustments can be made by following the simple rules highlighted in this article.
