Dealing with Change Requests and Issue Management

Angela is Senior Director, Product for Clarizen.

  Change Management  

Ask any project manager, and they will probably tell you they aren’t a huge fan of change. Change to a project means the potential for resource relocation, budget mishaps and delayed deliverables. Project managers spend a lot of time allocating these pieces of a project, and having to rework the plan can be messy and time consuming at best--detrimental to the budget and company at worst.

Changes can be major or minor and effect projects accordingly. Major changes include things that will cause your team to miss major milestones and due dates or require additional funding. Minor changes are bound to occur in most projects since they rarely run 100% according to plan from start to finish. These can include small due-date extensions and will not have an impact on the project budget.

It is important to have an evaluation process in place for the change requests that come in. Setting these guidelines will ensure that everyone is on the same page and responds to change requests unanimously. A few important questions that a project manager uses to evaluate can include:

1. Is there a way around this change?
2. Will this require more money?
3. Are all stakeholders that are involved on board?
4. Will this effect contracts without outside vendors?
5. Are the negatives of this change worth the outcome?

Having a standard set of questions to ask …

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