Knowledge Area: Project Integration Management

• Change requests are very common in a project. Change request is a request for changing some aspect of the project plan such as the scope, timeline, cost, RESOURCES, technology, requirements etc. Any change to the project baseline, is treated as a potential change request. Change requests in project context are also referred as “CR”. A CR may originate from any of the project stakeholders including the project team and project manager also.

The reasons for change requests in the middle of the project includes below points:

1. The stakeholders realize that a new feature or requirement or new technology will be beneficial for the project
2. Sometimes new regulatory requirements may come up and the project needs to comply to them leading changes in an already planned project
3. Stakeholders may suddenly feel the need for changing the project time lines, project budget leading to change requests.
4. Very often in the midst of the project, the team or stakeholders may feel the need for taking up some corrective or preventive actions if variances, issues and problems are faced by the project team. These are recommended for keeping the project on track and ensuring the project’s final outcome will remain relevant.
5. Change requests are normal in the project. But it is important to adopt a discipline approach for handling all change requests. For that, a change management plan may be developed which will enlist the change management procedure. This can be shared with all relevant stakeholders. Change management process should be done in the most formal manner. All stakeholders must be educated and informed about the procedure during the project planning stage itself.

A change request can impact the project baselines and various other project documents and already developed project deliverables.

Typical steps to be followed will include the following:

• Conduct a thorough impact analysis of the change request.  The impacts could be on multiple aspects of the project.
• The findings from the impact analysis should be presented to the appropriate impacted stakeholders. And a discussion with the appropriate stakeholders which may include the sponsor, customer must be done. IDEA is to make all the stakeholders aware about the impact and SEEK their approval after they understand the impacts.
• IF the stakeholders approve the change request with the impacts, then the project manager need to work on updating the project management plan ensuring the impacts are properly reflected in the updated plan.
• The updated plan should be approved by the sponsor.
• Upon approval of the updated plan, the PM should execute the project as per the updated project plan and should start implementing the change.
• In the process of implementing the change, various existing project artefacts will undergo change. It will be important to maintain the versions of such artefacts to maintain the history of changes in happening in each of the artefacts.  These are known as configurable items and the process is known as configuration management.
• Some of the common challenges in handling change requests will include the following:
  • Formal change management plan may not be present
  • Stakeholders may tend to raise change requests in an informal manner
  • There may be conflict very often. What the project team will say is actually a change request, the customer and stakeholders many times may say that it is part of original scope. The project manager will have to discuss and resolve such situations and bring all stakeholders to a common understanding.
  • Frequent changes will be a challenge.
  • The project manager and team SOMETIME may find it difficult to say “NO” to a change.
  • Accepting or rejecting a change request with their associated impacts will require IMMENSE negotiation between the PM, team and other stakeholders including the customer and sponsor.