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Change management

 
What is change management?
Generally speaking, change management is a process designed to enable changes in a system to be made in an orderly manner. Key aspects include:
  • The submission of requirements, usually in the form of change requests and problem reports.
  • An institution which decides on whether or not to perform such changes in the project, usually referred to as CCB (Change Control Board).
  • Organizational means and ways to plan and track the status and progress of such change requests (this is usually done with the help of a configuration management tool).

 

Configuration Management Support Center
Support for defining change management processes (German)

Configuration management

 

 

Why is change management particularly important for e-projects?
In e-projects, a frequently voiced principle is: "Changes are welcome!". At the start of the project, the requirements can frequently not be defined in accurate detail. For this reason, changes are a necessary element of project execution and need to be managed professionally.

However, changes will in most cases have impacts on development cost and effort (and deadlines!). For this reason, it is absolutely essential for the client to actively take part in the work of the CCB (prioritizing CRs, jointly deciding on changes in project planning).

In practice, this often translates into difficult negotiations with the client: It is neither a good idea to voluntarily try to meet all requirements (and risk not being able to complete the project on time) nor is it helpful for the project's success to reject important changes all the time. A well-organized change management process can help to add transparency to these negotiations.
 

Claim management

Project planning/project controlling

 

 

What steps need to be taken?
  • Define the change management process as early as possible, preferably already when drawing up the tender (change management process incl. the definition of the CCB as an integral part of the tender).
  • Describe the process in more detail in the configuration management plan.
  • Implement the process in the configuration management tool (in small projects, it may make sense to just use a simple Excel tool).