Applied Software Project Management

Change Control

Throughout the course of most projects, many of the people involved come up with changes to the planned software that could be implemented. Many poorly managed software projects have been driven to failure because the designers, developers, and testers had to repeatedly switch directions because of uncontrolled changes. Changes originate from all over the project: a stakeholder may discover a new need that should be addressed, a senior manager could change his mind about a feature, a programmer could figure out a way to combine behaviors to make the software more efficient, a tester could discover conflicting requirements, etc. Some of these changes will be worth doing, while others should probably be scrapped. But every change will come with a sense of urgency, and the project manager needs a way to sort through them to make sure that only the right changes are made.

Change control is a method for implementing only those changes that are worth pursuing, and for preventing unnecessary or overly costly changes from derailing the project. Change control is essentially an agreement between the project team and the managers that are responsible for decision-making on the project to evaluate the impact of a change before implementing it. Many changes that initially sound like good ideas will get thrown out once the true cost of the change is known. The potential benefit of the change is written down, and the project manager works with the team to estimate the potential ...