by David A. Peck, PMP
Managing change, within the Scope of Work, is critical to the successful
completion of a project, for change management controls both internally
generated changes and customer-driven changes.
Most companies establish processes and procedures to control all project
changes. For instance, they require customer-driven changes to be submitted
to the project manager.
Each change should be reviewed based on the following criteria:
- What is the cost of the change?
- What is the impact to the project if this change
is implemented?
- What added value does the company receive if this
change is implemented?
- What other projects are impacted with this change?
Remember that change management is a continuous process.
Your project will evaluate many changes throughout its life. Each time change
is needed, these questions should be considered.
The changes themselves will be influenced by four factors:
- Management Commitment
- Organizational Policy
- Organizational Procedures
- Organizational Audit
Management commitment will support and approve all
change management processes, policies, and procedures. A post-project audit
of these changes should be conducted at a key-learning’s session held between
the project manager and the sponsor. Management should empower and support
the change control process. Once the change management policies and procedures
are adapted in your organization, they should become part of your standard
operating procedures. Implementation of these policies and procedures will
create some organizational challenges. Change is not easy to adapt within
any organization.
Your employees will transition as the change management policies and procedures
are implemented. It is unique that management must understand this transition
and deal with change issues as they arise. In conducting a large application
development project, I found the following user views when a change management
standard was adapted.
1. All changes are needed to run my business.
2. Maybe we need to review all changes before they are approved.
3. All changes will be approved and funded.
The transition and implementation of change management
will take time. As you can see from the three statements listed above,
all changes are needed to run your business, but they must be reviewed
for impact on the project deliverable, project deadline and scope of the
project. If a change is submitted more than once during the life of a
project, the project manager should look for the root cause of the change.
Different employees often use data in different ways. This is a sign that
the business requirements are not correctly stated for all users. Getting
to the root cause of a change will help deliver your project with the
right functionality.
Organizations can expect to deliver projects within a controlled scope.
All business changes will be funded and approved within the guidelines
of your organizations. Project managers will understand how to implement
and control changes. Projects will be delivered on time and users will
be educated about the impact of requesting a change.
Change is not easy to adapt within any organization. The implementation
of policies and procedures are bound to create some organizational challenges
such as business conflicts, organizational ownership issues, and controlled
implementations. To overcome these challenges, each organization must
adapt policies and enforce these policies when the tough decisions and
user demands occur. If these steps are taken, organizations can expect
project deliveries to improve and users to be satisfied with the project
deliverables.
Dave Peck is a principle consultant for MA&A Group, Inc., a Project
Management and Information Technology (IT) consulting firm, specializing
in Financial Services and Telecommunications. He is a certified project
manager (PMP) specializing in business recovery, network assessments,
process design, and strategic planning. For more information about the
MA&A Group, please visit the website at MA&A
Group, Inc.
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