Managing Project Changes

In this chapter

• Understand what is meant by a project "change" and project change control
• Understand why scope changes occur
• Understand why good project managers take project change control seriously
• Learn the key management fundamentals for successfully handling project changes
• Review the essential components of an effective project change control system
• Learn how to reduce project changes
• Understand the common mistakes with managing project changes and how to avoid them

For many people, project control equals "managing project changes," and managing project changes equals preventing "scope creep." While this belief is not completely accurate, the perception cannot be ignored. The ability to manage and control the change elements on a project, particularly the project scope, is a key to project success and a key performance indicator for a project manager. To manage project changes effectively, a project manager must utilize all of his/her skills and demonstrate project leadership. In addition to being an insightful measure of individual project management maturity, it is not uncommon for organizations that are in the early stages of adopting project management business approaches to look at how well project changes are being managed to determine whether project management is making a difference or not.

While it sounds like there is a lot riding on this ability to manage project changes (and there is), the process is not difficult if you follow the key success principles and understand how to avoid the common errors.

tip

The ability to effectively manage and control project changes is a trademark of a mature project manager.

In this chapter, we will continue our review of project control by taking a focused look at managing project changes. We will clarify what we mean by "managing project changes," understand what drives most project scope changes, review the success principles of managing project changes, emphasize the essential elements of a project change control system, review powerful techniques that should help reduce the number of changes we need to manage, and make sure we are aware of the common challenges faced by many project managers in this arena in the past.

Scope Creep A common term used to describe uncontrolled expansion of project scope. Scope creep is legendary for causing project delays and cost overruns.