Project management
MANAGING project change requests in the most popular project methodologies: Waterfall and Agile project approaches.
Simply put, a waterfall project methodology approach involves detailed planning of the entire project and then execution, delivering and closing the project.
An agile approach will involve incremental delivery of value according to sprints. What is a change request in projects?? A change request is normally when a client requests to alter the scope of the project which was originally planned and approved.
A project is deemed as a living thing and needs to have a project life cycle therefore it is inevitable that projects are faced with change requests from stakeholders and particularly from the client side. Project managers should not frown or get agitated when key stakeholders request for change. Most projects are a result of contracted work with specific terms of references and any changes to the contract should be formalised and approved known as contract variations.
Change is inevitable, change must be embraced in projects. Scope change can presumably bring in more income to the supplier or contractor and the benefit to the client or customer is that the project deliverables will most likely closely meet the intended objective. So it is a win-win situation and project managers on supplier or client sides should embrace change and most importantly put in place some agreed mechanisms of project scope change control in order to formally manage project scope change. If this is not properly managed on both sides it may result in scope creep and serious misunderstandings.
When a project manager is confronted with a change request from key stakeholders, a good project manager would typically say to the client or key stakeholder “Great, let me help you fill in our standard change requests form and would get back to you within a reasonably agreed time period. The time period for the change request feedback may vary depending on the particular change request raised. Typical change request result would be; to accept; To defer or to reject. I say this because project managers need to carry out change request impact analysis on budget, schedule, scope, risks, quality, and benefits and of course customer satisfaction.
An interesting question here is who pays for the time spent on change request impact analysis? Different organizations and companies view this expense or cost differently. Some organizations would charge this cost to management reserve budget line which caters for unknown unknowns whilst others may charge this to project management fees. Depending on project context and circumstances believe me this could take days or a couple of weeks. If you will charge this to project management reserves budget line then you need to factor in costs and benefits to justify the change request. If you do not use management reserves in your organization or company then probably this would be charged to the business unit benefiting from the project output or outcomes.
In waterfall projects contract variations may be be handled as risks and using lessons learned from previous related projects we can factor in contingency plans to mitigate these risks that should there be contract variations then we can respond and adjust project schedule appropriately.
In Agile project methodology change requests are much embraced since the agile manifesto emphasizes on embracing change, adaptability and flexibility so the project outputs closely match customer expectations. In Agile project management care must be taken in contract formulation so that agile teams on the delivery level are empowered to make decisions, and changes based on customer requirements.
A project change budget is a sum of money that the customer and contractor agree will be used to fund the cost of requests for change, and possibly also their analysis costs. Unless the anticipated level of change on a project is low, it is advisable for a budget to be set up to pay for changes. This arrangement can reduce the number of trivial exceptions arising in projects where the frequency of requests for change is forecast to be high. Including a change budget provides for a more realistic expectation of the overall costs/timeframe of the project.
Final thoughts: Change requests are issues, therefore should be formally managed. Projects become challenged if there is no proper system for capturing & managing changes and may result in undesirable scope creep and may impact on the schedule and project budget. Project managers should always avoid uncontrolled change (‘scope creep’) in their projects. It is important to Identify, assess and control any potential and approved project scope changes. Issues, change & configuration management requirements for the project must be documented well in advance as part of the overall project plan. Normally a team is constituted known as change control board (CCB) and its primary task is to authorize requests for change. The Project Manager and/or the people with delegated project assurance responsibilities may act as the Change Control Board
This article was written by Dr Laban Mwansa, MSP®, PMP®, PRINCE2® Practitioner, Agile®, Laban is a consultant and trainer in project management and specifically trainer/coach in PMP®, PRINCE2® Practitioner, and PRINCE2 Agile® in Zambia, South Africa and Europe for many years. He was in the executive committee of ICTAZ as technical chair. He is also the managing partner of Betaways Innovation Systems and can be reached at: Laban.Mwansa@betaways-innovations.com, +260975280392 or WhatsApp +27817029669. He is also a professional project management member of PMSA and PMI-USA.
In waterfall projects contract variations may be be handled as risks and using lessons learned from previous related projects we can factor in contingency plans to mitigate these risks that should there be contract variations then we can respond and adjust project schedule appropriately.