May 10, 2012. Paul Hixon
Project change management is the procedure whereby alterations to the project plan are evaluated, analyzed and a decision made on whether or not to incorporate them into your plans. Here I’ll show the standard process for managing change with a particular focus on the software industry.
It all begins with the project manager receiving change request forms. These should be standardized by the project manager to include the various information, alterations and change details. The project manager will initially attempt to classify the impact of the change to their project plan, costs, resourcing, technology choices, innovation strategy and time-line.
In many larger projects if the changes are quite minor and do not involve financial costs or impact on the time-lines then it may be approved straightaway by the project manager and implemented. However it is more common for most change requests to be evaluated as part of a change decision-making meeting or committee.
Such a steering meeting is usually done on a weekly basis and includes various stakeholders (the PM, product managers, change requester, etc.). The change request is presented by the PM along with their evaluation of what the impact will be. The committee can then evaluate the value or benefit of this change. It might be outright rejected or approved with various stipulations. It could be approved for immediate implementation, approved but deferred to implementation at a later stage or approved with modifications.
The outcome of the meeting should be documented as part of meeting minutes and distributed to team members and all stakeholders. One final additional stage may be required to get financial approval if major changes have a large financial impact. This approval is usually required by the project sponsor.
The project change management process ends with the project manager updating their project plans with the change, communicating the change their team members and starting implementation.
Updated May 10, 2012. Published February 22, 2011. Paul Hixon
