The Importance of Tracking Changes
Even the best planned project will need to change its plan at some point. Depending on the methodology used these can be easier, or more challenging, to incorporate, but regardless of how your project is run you’ll need some way of accepting, tracking, approving and deploying changes to The Plan.
Accepting change requests
The process begins with accepting requests for change. This can be as simple as someone adding a ticket to a backlog, and as complex as an official form someone has to fill out and submit to a specific person(s). Determining how your project will accept change should be considered during your planning process, and should be clearly documented.
This process should be shared with your project team and senior stakeholders as they’re the most likely groups to need to submit a change, but the process should also be setup to allow change requests from other sources (e.g. customers, suppliers, etc). Not only will they need access to the process itself, but ensure any documentation around how the overall process works is also available.
Tracking Changes
Change requests, regardless of viability or type, need to be tracked. This could be a simple whiteboard accessible to folks, or a complex software system. What you track may depend on your environment and specific needs of your team. At minimum, however, you should track the following information:
Tracking number - This is a unique identifier that allows folks to refer to a specific change request. This makes it easier to discuss and track throughout the system.
Description - A description of the requested change, including why it is being requested.
Requestor - The individual who requested the change. Followup questions, status updates and other things will be sent their way.
Status - Indicates where the request is in the workflow (e.g. “new”, “rejected”, “Accepted” etc).
Impacted area - The area of the project this request impacts. This could be a specific task(s), milestone or part of the project and is intended to help determine the risk this change request represents.
Approving Changes
Historically this is where I find waterfall projects get a bit of a bad rap since each change has to be evaluated by a change control board and approved or declined. This is an extreme version of change control, but it does offer some advantages that help ensure the change is handled as safely as possible:
Every change is evaluated
The appropriate stakeholders sign off on the change
Unfortunately it does have some downsides - mainly it can take a while for anything to get approved. This puts the project at risk of missing out on critical changes or pushing the timeline if something truly needed is delayed.
At the other end of the spectrum are approaches like Scrum, which allow anyone to submit a feature request or a change, which is then evaluated by the product owner. This has the opposite benefits of waterfall:
Much less friction in submitting requests
Changes can be evaluated and approved more quickly
Personally I find this makes it easier for changes to be considered, and adopted. That said, I also find that agile projects end up with a backlog that goes on forever as many groups don’t take time to go through and either reject, or archive, requests they won’t do.
Your specific will help dictate what your approval process is - typically some form of signoff is needed, however, how much evaluation each change goes through and who has to signoff can vary.
Monitor the Change
Approving changes helps avoid potential risk or negative side-effects, however, they still need to be monitored to ensure they place nice with the rest of the project. You can tailor your monitoring efforts to the size of the change - bigger changes = more monitoring - but in general I like to check in on any change a bit more frequently than other items.
Change is good… when controlled
Change isn’t anything to be afraid of - all projects go through it - but it is something to keep an eye on. Having a process, and making sure your team understands how to follow it, is critical to having changes happen in a graceful way.