Work out how to manage changes

Change is an inevitable part of projects. The whole point of a project is to change something. There are two types of change:

• changes that come about as a result of the project, i.e. the deliverables of your project;

• changes within the project, e.g. as a result of new requirements, upgraded technology or external pressures such as new laws or modi­

fications to regulatory frameworks, or a sponsor who changes the priorities.

The impact of the first type of change is the subject of your project and has been carefully planned with a communications and implementation strategy.

It is the second type of change with which we are concerned here: how to manage changes that affect your project objective in some way. Advance planning for how to handle these changes will make it easier when one comes along during the project.

K E E P I N G I T U N D E R C O N T R O L

Process-driven industries rely on accurate monitoring and careful manage­

ment of changes, as Leo Dijkhuizen knows well. He has spent 10 years in a chemical and pharmaceutical environment in the Netherlands, where strict change-control procedures are a necessary part of his role as a project man­

ager specializing in complex accounting software implementations. Working on projects with budgets that stretch into millions of dollars and timeframes of several years, he has found it absolutely critical to manage changes in a controlled way.

Dijkhuizen explains the change-control process of a project to define and implement a global SAP system: ‘Each change had to be justified with a business case,’ he says. ‘The steering committee reviewed and approved – or rejected – each business change.’ The system was being rolled out across six European countries and the USA, with the aim of globalizing the company’s supply chain and lowering inventory costs.

The project took three and a half years, and with a budget of $32 million it would have been easy for small changes to mount up over time and push the scope and budget way over what had been anticipated. ‘The customer required a tight control over changes, so it was not difficult to implement a change-control process,’ Dijkhuizen says. Having global, centralized change control helped to achieve a smooth rollout across the seven countries. The steering committee signed off each change and was sure it understood the implications.

Dijkhuizen’s advice is to find someone in the project structure who can act as a sponsor for the change process. ‘Make sure this person operates at

Work out how to manage changes

the right level in the organization. If you cannot find someone who meets the description, ask the steering group what their policy is regarding changes and develop a process to manage each change around that.’

Change control or change management is the process of managing unplanned but desired influences on the project. It is important because any change will:

• need to be analysed for its impact on project objectives;

• need to be analysed for its impact on project scope;

• modify your existing plans;

• need to be recorded properly for a complete audit trail.

T H E E I G H T S T E P S O F A C H A N G E - M A N A G E M E N T P R O C E S S

Document the change request in the change log. Ask the person who has suggested the change to be as specific as possible and put the change in writing. If they have any supporting materials (such as quotes or estimates for the work that needs to be done) that might help the analysis, ask for those too. The change log is like a risk or issue log and in its simplest form is a document where changes and activities are written down. See the appendix for an example.

Analyse the request briefly to establish ownership. As a team, look at the change request to decide whether to take it forward. This gives you the chance to discuss the political motivations behind the change and to throw out anything that is blatantly impossible. The change request process can be used by stakeholders to bring things to the project team’s attention or to raise issues, so you also have the opportunity to check whether it is a legitimate change or a query that is better handled via a different route.

Assign an owner who can analyse the change impact more fully. Step (ii) will have flagged who is best suited to carry out the full impact analysis.

Allocate an owner to the change – someone who can coordinate this activity.

Assess the priority of the change request. Give the change request a priority. Is it critical, important or nice to have? This provides a sense of urgency for planning the impact analysis.

Analyse and report back on the change impact. The relevant people should carry out the impact analysis looking at:

• what elements would need to change;

• what the impactwould beon the schedule/budget/resources/quality/

business case (remember the contingency budget is not there to pay for new requirements!);

• what effort would be required to make the change;

• what the impact would be if the change is not made.

Project Management in the Real World

The owner should report back to the project team (larger projects may have a delegated change control team or forum) with a recommenda­

tion.

Decide the course of action: approve or reject the change request. Take the decision, ratifying it with the relevant stakeholders and those affected by the change.

Record the outcome in the change log. Complete the documentation for the change log. Note whether the change request was approved, the rationale behind it and the date the decision was communicated to the requestor. Include where the impact analysis can be found so if there is a query or similar change raised later you can find it again easily.

If approved, update all relevant documentation. Cascade the relevant changes into all the project documents that need updating, such as the project initiation document, plan and budget. Issue a new version of those documents so everyone has the current view of the project scope and requirements.

Your company’s process may be slightly different. Follow internal guidelines if there are any, but the activities will be largely the same as described here.

Change management can be unsettling. You start out on a well-defined project and suddenly everything is different and there is a stack of paperwork to complete for the audit trail. It is not all bad news though. ‘Change requests are cause for celebration,’ says Bill Duncan, director of standards for the American Society for the Advancement of Project Management. ‘When your customers or clients ask for something new or different, it means that they are actually involved in the project. It means that they care about the project, that they are still interested in it, and that they are still planning on using the product of the project.’²³ Looked at like that, change requests are actually good news, and once you have been through the process for the first time, handling subsequent change requests becomes much easier.

G O L D E N R U L E S

Establish a change-management process following the steps outlined here to handle deviations from the original project scope, requirements, schedule or budget.