Fundamentals for Managing Project Change

There are seven key management principles for effective project change control:

• Plan for changes—Change control does not mean preventing changes at all costs. Conversely, project changes should be expected, planned, and well managed. The two keys here are selecting the proper project approach (methodology) and setting up a project change control system (to be discussed next). For projects with an innovation focus or a volatile set of requirements, an iterative or agile development-type approach that expects deliberate scope expansion or scope clarification should be utilized.
• Set up a change control system—If your organization does not already have a defined procedure for project change control, then you need to set up a change control system for your project. The key benefits for establishing a formal change control system include the following:
  • Helps protect the integrity of the project performance baselines
  • Ensures that the right people are involved in the decision-making process
  • Helps manage stakeholder expectations
  • Enhances the credibility and professionalism of the project manager
  • Prevents issues and confrontations when changes do occur
• Educate stakeholders—Whether you adopt an existing change control system or develop your own, you need to step through the change control process with your stakeholders. Do not assume that because the procedure is documented that individuals understand it or their roles and responsibilities within it.
• Use the system—This might seem obvious, but it is a common pitfall. Make sure to utilize the change control system that you have defined. If the project manager does not consistently follow the process, no one else will either.
• Minimize scope changes—This is the great balance of managing project changes. On the one hand, you plan for changes and set up a system to manage those changes when they do occur; on the other hand, you work diligently on influencing those factors that are responsible for project changes, especially scope changes, to minimize their occurrence. The keys here include the following:
  • Keep the team focused on the project objectives, the big picture.
  • Listen carefully. You must understand immediately when a critical gap is identified.
  • Limit, if not totally avoid, any unnecessary changes by either the customer or the team.
  • Educate stakeholders on the impact of their change request.
  • Encourage any scope change request that is not an absolute, must-have feature to be scheduled for a follow-up project (cycle, iteration, or phase). NoteWhile it might seem contradictory, the fundamental principle of “minimizing scope changes” as described here actually aligns with the agile approach. In the agile approach, the focus is always on delivering the most value with the least product (minimum viable product). The agile planning process keeps the team focused on “high value” work items, identifies/communicates the cost of any new work item to the customer, and encourages “lesser priority” work items to remain in the product backlog for a future iteration.
• Overcommunicate—For effective stakeholder management, make sure that all project changes are clearly communicated and understood by all key project stakeholders.
• Be a watchdog—As a project manager, you must be continuously alert and mindful about anything that could impact your critical success factors. In particular, you need to understand what can cause unplanned scope changes to occur—and then work to prevent their occurrence.