Change Management

Readers, following my earlier post on the comparison between Change Management and Risk Management, received requests on more about these two Project Management disciplines. I will discuss Change Management in this post and Risk Management in a subsequent one.

Change Management as the name suggests is for managing changes. But, what changes? The changes that are considered for Change Management can be broadly classified as –

• Technology changes
• Domain changes
• Resource changes
• Location changes
• Sub-contractor changes
• Strategy changes

Steps in Change Management

1.   Identify the dependencies of the change and the dependencies on change. This is to quantify the change.

2.   Assess the impact of the change on the current scenario – this could be positive or negative immediately, but positive in the long run.

3.   If the change is regarding a product that is in market, conduct a customer survey to know the likely response to the change.

4.   Identify any risks that are foreseen for implementing the change.

5.   Estimate the duration and budget for change.

6.   Estimate the resource requirements for the change.

7.   Enquire on the availability of the resources.

8.   Take a decision on implementing the change.

•  The change can be accepted for immediate implementation.
• The change can be accepted but for a delayed implementation.
• The change can be put on hold for want of more information or for a clarity on the situation.
• The change can be rejected if it is not viable due to budget constraints or resource crunch or any other reasons.

Change Management Board

In an organization, the change management is normally taken up by a change control board comprising of the field personnel who would be accountable for the change, top management who can make business decisions, subject matter experts if the change is regarding technology and/or domain.

Based on the type of change and magnitude of change, change control board might have to meet once or several times and ensure that a decision on change is taken as soon as possible.