What is Change Control
From Requirements Management School
A good process for managing change is essential. Lack of process control leads to chaos. Chaos leads to bad quality products, overruns and overspends. The three things that we really don’t want!
With this in mind and because we know that change is inevitable we have to find a way to deal with it. We have to face the fact that scope will in all likelihood creep but our goal is to minimize it to only beneficial creep.
Change control in requirements management is the process by which any changes needed to the requirements baseline are managed. Whether the change is big and complex or small and simple they still need to travel the same initial route into the change control process.
The change control process should be agreed and in place before the baseline is agreed so that everyone is aware of the process and is in no doubt that it will be enforced. The change control process needs to be backed up by clearly defined policies which are enforced consistently. The process needs to be streamlined, efficient and transparent in order to get buy in from the stakeholders.
Change requests can be a highly emotive topic. It is important to make sure that the project sponsor is involved in the process, right at from the start. It is not unusual to have a change control board in place so that a group of stakeholder representatives make the ultimate decision with regards to the authorization or rejection of a change request.
Some Pointers on Change Control
We'll shortly take a closer look at the stages a change request should go through. Before that let us look at some important points that should be considered:
- Vast amounts of small changes can have the same impact as one complex one.
- Every request must go into this process; all requests should be initially reviewed with the sponsor to decide whether it goes on to the impact analysis stage or whether it is approved/rejected immediately. This should weed out the inappropriate and allow smaller changes to be expedited if necessary.
- Impact analysis can be costly, therefore it is important to apply some differentiation made between types of requirement.
- Communicate effectively. All decisions at each stage of the process must be communicated and documented via a central system that all the stakeholders have access to.
- Every request should be reviewed in terms of cost, time and quality impact.
Stages of a Good Change Control Process
A robust change control process should have all or most of the stages outlined below:
- Request – Formal change request is made.
- Review – initial pass-through; analysis and impact.
- Approval – a formal approval process.
- Scheduling – negotiation of resources and scheduling of the change.
- Tracking – tracking of the new/changed requirement.
- Implementation – design and development of the change where it enters into the normal requirements management process.
