Microsoft Project 2007: The Missing Manual

Chapter 16. Managing Change

No matter how flawlessly or exhaustively you plan your project, you can’t foresee everything that might bubble up. Project management is a rich gumbo of managing time, resources, and costs. At the same time, you can’t forget to add managing risks, issues, and change to the project management pot. In fact, some people say that managing projects is essentially managing change.

Project changes come in all shapes and sizes. A change can be as small as a single task you overlooked. Cost cutting measures that eliminate your contract labor and part-time resources constitute a major change. You can distill all these changes into two main categories: changes you can address without someone else’s approval, and changes you can’t. If a hurricane delays the shipment of essential parts, you can rework the schedule to accommodate that delay. However, if the project customer asks for final delivery one month earlier, you probably need permission before spending the $300,000 required for accelerated delivery.

This chapter introduces the two major aspects to managing project change: setting up a change management system, and incorporating changes into your project plan. A change management system plays two important roles. First, it helps you prevent scope creep by identifying changes to the project and actually deciding whether or not to include them. Second, it provides a consistent process for evaluating change requests and getting them approved (which essentially means ...