Control the Cost of Change

Bart has been in ecommerce for over 20 years, and can't imagine a better job to have. He is interested in all things agile, or anything new to learn.

  Change Management   Talent Management   Teams   ProjectsAtWork  

When aware of the different hidden costs of change, project managers can positively influence those costs — and minimize the disruption to their teams, creating a project environment where change becomes a force for good, rather than something to avoid or resist. Here are three best practices that will help.

This is second article in a two-part series on the costs of change. Part one is here.

Change is not only a normal part of the project management process; it’s a desired one. Every day that passes gives us more insight into the product we are building, the market that it will be addressing, and the challenges we will face in completing it. This new insight should lead to better ideas, better plans, and better solutions. Attempting to prevent change — or even resist it — is the wrong approach, but we need a better way to embrace it when it comes.

Let’s look at some things that projects managers can do to make the cost of change as low as possible.

1. Build change into the project plan

One of the more disruptive parts of alterations to project is the seemingly random nature of it. Urgent requests to evaluate a new idea come in, new tasks show up at any given time of the project, and the reasons for them are fuzzy and incomplete, if they are given at all. This was actually one of the things that Agile tried to solve; by recognizing …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.