Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Chapter 15. 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. You also 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 adding 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. Suppose a task on the critical path takes a few days longer than planned. In a situation like that, you evaluate your options, such as fast-tracking or reassigning resources, and choose the one you think is the best for getting the schedule back on track. However, if a stakeholder asks for a big change to a deliverable, you probably need approval from the customer or management team before you jump into action.

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 then deciding whether or not to include them. ...