Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Setting Up a Change-Management System

When you manage a project, change is unavoidable. You’re continually beset on all sides with requests and demands to change some aspect of your project. You also gain a better understanding of the project as time passes. Team members may uncover new information or requirements that seem to be aligned with the project’s objectives. The powers that be, who are under considerable pressure to deliver faster results and higher profits, can in turn ask you to bring in the project’s finish date or reduce costs—or both.

A significant part of your project manager role is to handle these change requests and incorporate the ones that make sense into the project plan. You need flexibility so you can take advantage of proposed changes, like the one suggested in Figure 15-1. At the same time, you also need a way to ensure that the project’s scope, schedule, and budget don’t change without the customer’s or stakeholders’ approval.

A change-management process can deliver that balance between control and flexibility. It provides mechanisms for people to submit change requests, for your team to evaluate submitted requests, and for a change review board to decide the fate of those requests. After change requests are approved, they become part of the project, and you track the work they require as you do the original tasks in your plan.

In this section, you’ll learn techniques for controlling project changes like developing a change-request tracking system and forming ...