Change Management Processes in Project Management Methodology and Planning

Change management is is required on a project to ensure changes to original scope, or any outside changes, impact the project in an organised and managed way.

There are many considerations to be made when looking at change for example;

• What is it that needs to change?
• Why does it need to change?
• How much might it cost to change?
• What will be the impact of the change to the firm or individuals?

A structured methodology needs to be put in place for dealing with and recording decisions made regarding change.
This is normally done by setting up a change control process which deals with change requests which then contain a record or audit of why something changed and what process was in place to ensure that change was managed effectively. In a software project changes normally deal with any changes to the current scope of the project, and generally dont include resolution of defects which is dealt with by an issue management process.

The typical elements to be considered for a change control process;

• Scope, how big is the change?
• Effect, what will be the effect of the change?
• Time-line, how long will the change take, where does it fit into the current schedule?
• Resources, what resources, time and materials will be required in order to make change happen?
• Communications, how will the changes be communicated?
• Risk, what is the risk to business as usual by making the change?

A process needs to be wrapped around the considerations which in general will look like something similar to the below;


This process will have a manual or automated system in place which will monitor and record detail and decisions regarding the change request made. A typical change request form may take three parts;

• Request detail, completed by a requester.
• Evaluation detail, completed by a change or project manager.
• Approval detail, completed by an approval authority.

For example the form elements may look as below;
or (download a Change Management Form) in Word which looks like the below. download the change management form in XML  if you prefer (you will need to do a file 'save as' after viewing the xml).





For a full list of fields which should appear on such a form you can have a look at our change management checklist.

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