Anticlue

Integrated Change Control

In project management, integrated change control is a way to manage the changes incurred during a project. Integrated change control is the described method that manages reviewing the suggestions for changes and utilizing the tools and techniques to evaluate whether the change should be approved or rejected.

The inputs for integrated change control include the following:

• Project Management Plan – The project management plan is the basis for all project activities, so it offers insights when considering changes and deciding whether to proceed with the change or not.
• Requested changes – Requested changes arise from the executing or monitoring and controlling process groups.
• Work performance information – Work performance information acts as an input because the information will influence your decisions on how to handle the requests and recommendations you receive.
• Recommended preventive actions – Recommended preventive actions are recommendations or requests that are generated as the project progresses. Normally to alleviate, mitigate or avoid a risk.
• Recommended corrective actions – Recommended corrective actions result from the identification of problems, while others result from the Monitor and Control Project Work process.
• Recommended defect repairs – Recommended defect repairs are all produced as outputs from the Monitor and Control Project Work process.
• Deliverables – The project manager may need to make changes to deliverables as a result of decisions made while evaluating change requests.
  Having a functional, working, and understood integrated change control process is a way to manage and handle changes to the project management plan.

To make sure that these changes are reflected in your project components you'll have to use the following tools and techniques:

• Project management methodology - A project management methodology provides guidelines, procedures, and templates for implementing integrated change control. The methodology may be specific to your organization, external standards, or a combination of both.
• Project management information system (PMIS) - A PMIS can house project documents and control a user's ability to edit these documents. Additionally, a PMIS can automatically generate notifications to alert team members when documents have changed.
• Expert judgment - Expert judgment means using your past project experience—and that of your teammates and coworkers—to make decisions about whether to approve or reject requested changes.

Using these tools and techniques it is easier to assure that changes are implemented and recorded and that their impact on the project baseline is recognized.
A control process in place for changes needs to have consideration for the impact the changes will have on the project outcomes. These effects should be updates to the project management plan, scope statement, and deliverables. The outputs of an integrated change control process are:

• approved change requests
• rejected change requests
• Project Management Plan (updates)
• Project Scope Statement (updates)
• approved corrective actions
• approved preventive actions
• approved defect repairs
• validated defect repairs
• approved deliverables.

When evaluating changes needed in a project, speed of evaluation is important. The worst place is to have no anticipated times for a change evaluation decision. Either the project will have time added to its timeline, or changes that are not evaluated will start to consume project resources.