Change Proposals

00:02 We discussed the change process during the planning part of this course.

00:06 But as you may have picked up already, you can't plan for changes to the project.

00:10 You can only prepare for them.

00:13 So what really happens when a change request is submitted? Let's look at an example in our laboratory project.

00:21 Imagine you're four months into the project and are faced with three situations.

00:27 First, the software engineer responsible for the visualizations on the podiums contacts you, saying that it will be easier for her to install the projectors if you modify the roof.

00:38 The roof has already been built and changes would cost $10,000 and take an additional two weeks.

00:47 After that, the marketing expert in charge of training the new staff explains to you that important training needs to be added to the training program at the cost of three more days and 1000.

00:58 And just when you thought the day was over, the car producers called to tell you that instead of transporting all the cars on the agreed date, they will only deliver half and the other half the following day.

01:10 Whew! What a day.

01:12 So what would you do? Which would you say yes to? And what additional questions will you need to answer before making a decision? On one hand, you're very aware that any changes will cost time and resources. And of course you put so much effort into planning, you want to protect that plan. But on the other hand, as work progresses, better ways to do things will come to light.

01:35 Maybe something had been missed during planning.

01:38 Or perhaps someone just came up with a new idea.

01:41 Not all changes are bad and some are just necessary.

01:47 It's up to you to differentiate between them.

01:50 The best way to do this is to be vigilant in your approach.

01:56 The brief overview of a change process looks like this.

02:01 Get as many details as possible and gain an understanding of what impact the change will have on the scope, time and cost.

02:09 Once that is clear, you can decide to reject the unnecessary changes or those that increase the scope, time or cost more than they're worth.

02:16 You can take suggestions through the change process, prepare a change request form with all the appropriate information, and obtain approval from the project sponsor.

02:25 Or if the changes are of low impact on the time, scope and cost, you can implement them without the lengthy approval process.

02:33 Awesome. So let's see how you could handle the previous situations.

02:40 With the software engineers proposal, it would be a sensible idea to reject it.

02:45 There isn't much that would benefit the project.

02:48 It may make the software teams job easier, but their responsibilities would have been detailed in the project scope and their roles agreed upon previously.

02:57 Of course, you would need to ask plenty of questions.

03:00 You will need to speak to engineers to make sure the planned work can actually be done.

03:04 And it isn't a problem that was unforeseen.

03:07 You may even find a compromise that would not cost the project as much work.

03:11 You are a reasonable project manager after all.

03:16 With the marketing expert suggestion you will need to investigate to see if the training is in fact relevant for the staff, and if so, establish whether triggering a change will cost the project or fall within the buffers you gave the task.

03:29 If all is well, you would likely start prepping a change request form.

03:36 As for the car production, this seems like a minor change.

03:39 One day is not going to make a difference to the project, so you could just agree and update the plan accordingly.

03:45 Of course, you will want to get more details to ensure that this delay is not being caused by a bigger problem with production and that quality is not being compromised.

03:56 You are a great project manager, so you will not want to agree to anything blindly. Cool.

04:03 You handled that very well and with minimal cost to the project.

04:06 Well done. And with that, we have covered How to control your project.

04:12 You learned how to read the actuals and measure them against the targets in your plan. You also learned how to use this information to tell you if you can complete a task on time, on budget or both.

04:24 You know how to measure quality at each stage and you can keep your risk assessment up to date. Finally, you learned how to confidently deal with any potential changes in your project.

04:37 You must be good at juggling to handle all of this while executing the project at the same time. Speaking of which, let's head back to execution and see how to keep the stakeholders updated with your project.

04:48 Great work, everyone.