The primary objective of the Change Control process is to manage changes to the Project Scope and/or the Project Schedule and/or Project Resources. A request affecting either of these areas may impact the project’s budget, schedule and/or product. Management of these changes includes the administrative management, tracking, review, and assessment of proposed changes; the organized and timely review and decision on change approval; and the administrative process to ensure that the project team is informed of changes when they are approved.
Scope changes will come from the perceived need for a change in a project deliverable that may affect its functionality and in most cases the amount of work needed to perform the project. A scope change is a very crucial occurrence. It most likely will require additional project funds, resources, and time. Therefore, a committee that consists of stakeholders from all areas of the project should be willing to convene and discuss the potential change and its anticipated impact on the project. Scope changes need to be communicated clearly and effectively to the project team by the project manager. Team members will want, and need, to understand how the scope change affects their roles in the project. Some examples of scope change include:
Schedule changes can be affected by any number of issues from resources to funding, vendors, weather, and anything in between. The ability of a project manager to manage the schedule of a project and deliver it on time is a high-visibility concern for project success from a customer point of view. If a potential schedule problem is discovered, the problem must be investigated and the cause uncovered as soon as possible. Once the problem is discovered, a plan should be created for correcting the problem in the shortest allowable time with the least impact.
This section describes the procedures for executing the change control process. The procedures deliver a guideline to completing the Change Control Form that follows this section.
Project team members, customers, stakeholders, or contractors can submit a change request. This is to be done in writing, either on paper or in Email and should be submitted to the Project Lead. Whoever submits the request should include the items that are in Part II of the Change Control Request Form. The instructions for this section are below.
The Project Lead receiving the request should perform an initial review to determine:
If the request meets these qualifications, the Project Lead will complete the Change Control Form.
All of the information boxes in this section are self-explanatory with the exception of the box labeled Control Number. The schema to use for creating and using the control number is as follows:
Section I should identify a detailed description of the change that is being requested. It is acceptable to refer to the request as an attachment when it has been submitted by someone other than the Project Lead. The references pertain to describing whether the change is product related, organization or procedural in nature. Also, any reference material that will facilitate the review of the request should be attached.
Section II should identify a justification for why the change should be approved. This may be a cost/benefit type of justification, a productivity improvement justification, or a service enhancement to staff or customers. In any of these cases, the justification should quantify in detailed hours, dollars, staff count, process or procedure changes and product handling the effect the resultant change will have.
Section III should identify the impact a rejection of the request would have. This is the opposite of the justification section and should provide the same type of quantification of this impact.
Section IV should identify the alternatives that exist including:
Section V should identify the specific alternative that the requestor is recommending. Once the impact section in Part III is completed, the recommendation may change due to any of a number of factors including cost, schedule and quality of the product.
The Project Lead identifies how the work would be executed in the Specific Requirements Definition section. This will deliver a description of the magnitude of the work as well as a description of how the product will change from its original scope. The Project Lead also identifies the impact to the budget, the schedule and the original scheduled end date in the remainder of this section.
This process needs to acknowledge that there will be some amount of negotiation, compromise, and some amount of additional change suggested between the requestor and the Project Lead. This is a natural phenomenon and helps drive the project to select what should be the best alternative and solution to satisfy the request. Once this has been accomplished the Project Sponsor and the Project Lead should sign off on the Change Control request.
This section has purposely left out of the process any steps that may be necessary to take the request to either an authority higher than the Project Sponsor or to a different group for approval. The reason for this is so that the Change Control Form could be used in different situations where the approval authority for changes to budget, schedule or product can be executed If someone other than the Sponsor is named to approve the charter, identify those changes in Section D Project Change Control in the main body of the Project Charter.
Document the reasons for the disapproval. The reasons should clearly state why the request was rejected and if need be, add additional information pertinent to the impact of not doing the change.
