Change control procedures

It therefore makes good sense to embed a process for managing change at the start of each project, and this must include a systematic approach that covers the identification, assessment and control of any changes that arise.

In PRINCE2 all changes are treated as a type of project issue. Any issues that the potential to impact the project’s performance targets of time, cost, quality, scope, risk and benefits.

It is often misunderstood, but be objective of issue and change control procedures are not to prevent changes, but rather, to ensure that every change is first agreed by the relevant authority before it is implemented.

The first important aspect to consider is the answer to the question “how will we know when a change is requested to what we currently have?”.

The answer is to record the version details of each product, both management and specialist, once they had been signed off, and these are called a Baseline.

Therefore, a pre-requisite of affected issue and change control is the establishment of an appropriate configuration and management system which records baselines for the project products and ensures that the correct versions are delivered to the customer.

There is therefore a very close relationship between change control and configuration management, for this reason the change control administration normally takes place within your configuration management group. Within PRINCE2, configuration management is normally supplied from within Project Support.

It is therefore important that all issues and changes that may affect the projects baselines, first identified, then assess, and either approve, rejected or deferred.

Configuration management is the technical and administrative activity concerned with the creation, maintenance and controlled change of configuration throughout the life of a product (or item). A configuration item is an entity that is subject to configuration management. The entity may be a component of a product, a product or a set of products that form a release.

A release is a complete and consistent set of products that are managed, tested and deployed as a single entity to be handed over to the user(s). Issue and change control procedures need to be integrated with the configuration management system used by the project.

PRINCE2 uses the term ’issue’ to cover any relevant event that has happened, was not planned, and requires management action. It can be a concern, query, request for change, suggestion or off-specification raised during a project. Project issues can be about anything to do with the project.

Issues may be raised at any time during the project, by anyone with an interest in the project or its outcome. The different types of issue are:

Request for change. A proposal for a change to a baseline. For example, the Senior User would like to upgrade the processor speed for an IT system to comply with the latest software release.

Off-specification. This is something that should be provided by the project, but currently is not (or is forecast not to be) provided. An example here, is a piece of functionality is missing, or a product that is missing.

Problem/concern. Any other issue that the Project Manager needs to resolve or escalate. For example, advice from a supplier that they can no longer deliver one of the products specified by the customer.