MONITORING AND CONTROL STAGE (INTEGRATION) : PERFORM INTEGRATED CHANGE CONTROL

Perform Integrated Change Control is the process of reviewing, approving or rejecting and managing all change requests to deliverables, project documents, baselines, project management plan etc. The changes are requested by any stakeholder from the project. They start verbally, then written in a form or document and entered into change management and configuration system. They may need some estimated time and cost of the impacts of the project and product. Once approved, those changes may require new or revised cost estimates, activity sequences, scheduled dates, resource requirements and analysis of risk responses alternatives. They may also require some adjustment to the project management plan and project documents.

Note that every documented change request needs to be approved or rejected by either project sponsor or project manager as agreed during the planning stage. Moreover, this process where necessary may require having the Board called Change Control Board that reviews, evaluates, approves, delays or rejects the changes to the project, records and communicates such decisions.

Few inputs that you need to refer are:

• Project management plan that describes how to manage any change requested in the project.
• Change requests that can be for either corrective action, preventive action or defect repair during executing stage and monitoring and control stage. They normally affect the performance and not the baselines of the project.
• Organizational Process Assets that provide procedures on how the change request will be authorized, approved, validated and implemented.

This process can be done by:

• Using experts who can be asked to be part of the Change Control Board.
• Having Change Control Board Meeting for reviewing, approving or rejecting change requests. The decision made will be agreed by all members of the Board, documented and communicated to the stakeholders for more follow-up actions.
• Using Change Control Tool that helps to manage the change requests and the resulted decisions made by the Change Control Board.

The outputs are:

• Approved change requests that will be documented in the Change Log.
• Change Log that documents all approved and rejected change requests.
• Updates in Project management plan and project documents depending on the subject that change request will be applied.

References:

PMI (2013). A Guide to the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide 5^th Ed.) USA, Project Management Institute

http://satheespractice.blogspot.com/2012/02/manage-changes-in-your-project.html