Define project change management process
Change initiation
The project as it progresses shall encounter any of the following:
- Enlargement of scope in terms of additional requirements from customer
- Changes to the existing requirements
- Requirements identified internally by the project team which was missed out in earlier stages
In order to plan, monitor and control the above events, the change management process need to be defined for the project change request shall be initiated if any one (but not limited to these conditions) of the following conditions are satisfied:
- Requirement changes (addition, modification, or deletion) initiated by the customer or internally
- Any change in scope of work shall be treated as a Change Request
Change management steps
Change management procedure enables to handle changes to the work products / software in a controlled manner such that the integrity of the work product and software is ensured. The procedure formalizes the activities that need to be performed to execute the changes in the project. It details necessary steps such as performance of impact analysis, effort and cost estimation and details on configuration management aspects in going about the change to the project impacted artifacts. Change Control Board members shall review and approve the change requests. Change Control Board members shall comprise representatives from the customer end.
- Identify the change and initiate
- Record the changes in the change request form
- Perform Impact analysis
- Perform size and effort estimation
- Change Control Board review and approval
- Upon approval of the change request, changes shall be incorporated.
- Change Request tracker shall be updated
- Addendum shall be prepared when there is a change in the approved or signed off MSA / SOW
Change Control Board
Change Control Board (CCB) shall be identified for each project in consultation with the project manager. CCB shall ideally constitute of Delivery Manager, Project Manager, Project Leader, Coordinator, and representative from Customer and / or other support group (if required) as agreed during the definition stage. CCB shall review, approve and ensure incorporation of changes. On approval of the change request by CCB, communication shall be sent to the respective stakeholders. CCB shall meet and review the change request as per the defined frequency or when the need arises.
Impact analysis
Changes shall be identified / initiated by the customer or project team through the life cycle of the project. The impact of the changes shall be analyzed in terms of feasibility, classification, configuration item to be changed, estimates of cost, effort, and schedule, risks, assumptions and dependencies shall be documented. Traceability matrix shall also be revised to effect the changes on the sections impacted in the configuration items.
hanges shall be approved by CCB and communicated to all affected groups / stakeholders. Changes identified by the project team shall be discussed after obtaining approval) from the customer before incorporating them into the system, if they impact the customer’s business. If there is a significant impact on the configuration items due to changes, then regression testing shall be planned and executed.
Implement changes
On approval of the change request by the CCB configuration items shall be checked out. Changes are implemented based on the change request. Changes made to the configuration items shall be traceable to the appropriate change request. The configuration item that was changed shall be subjected to reviews and / or testing as applicable. The configuration item in which the change has been implemented shall be baselined after review and / or testing as applicable. The configuration items shall be checked in after it has been baselined.
Configuration items shall be migrated from one environment to the other (such as development, testing, production, etc.) during the lifecycle of the change request implementation. For e.g. when change request is under development, configuration items are placed in development environment. On completion of unit testing, configuration items shall be moved under testing environment and once the testing is completed, it shall be moved to production environment. Any specific or detailed procedure shall be captured as part of the project’s configuration management plan based on the scope of the project.
Change request incorporation details
The change request information needs to be created for the new code. For the existing code, if the information is not there, then it is suggested to be incorporated whenever it implements any change to that part of the code. The change request incorporation details information shall be created and will not have any information for the new source code developed as part of the project. However, if the code is created because of some change request and is an enhancement to existing application, then the corresponding change request information responsible for the creation of the code shall be mentioned as the first change request details.
