Project changes during the development life cycle can be costly and impact other
ID: 398343 • Letter: P
Question
Project changes during the development life cycle can be costly and impact other parts of the project. Managing changes once the requirements and specifications have been approved necessitates project governance. In this assignment, you will investigate project governance and the change control process. Consider the workflow that you have been developing in the latest meeting with your client. The client has requested several significate changes to the workflow. In addition, the workflow is needed 3 weeks earlier than anticipated. Write a 750-1,000 word paper that address the project governance and change control process. Include the following in the paper: How will these changes impact the project budget, scope, and timeline? What are some alternatives to the changes to this project? What policies should be in place to control project changes? What are the implications of not following change control policies?
Explanation / Answer
Project Changes during a development life cycle impacts the project both in cost and time and thus it is necessary to have a governance and change management plan in place. In this scenario, the client has requested several significant changes in the workflow.
These scope or change management scenarios should be addressed through a proper change management request in every project. This can be effectively governed through an effective governance scheme and a Scope management scheme. For every project , below three frameworks should be available to proceed further
Scope management: in scope management framework, one should document every scope of the project. The defined scope has to be clearly written and should be signed formally among both parties before moving forward in the project. This avoids any later correction of scope by client for free etc.
Governance: Governance plays a crucial role in any project. A project with tighter governance delivers faster within the stipulated time and cost. In a IT Development setup, governance should be at a three level governance, i.e. Operational, Management and Strategic. These governance calls / meetings should be conducted as per a defined schedule for smooth movement of project.
The current set of changes expected by the client with impact the project timelines and cost. With respect to the timelines, the client has expected an early delivery of the work flow solution. A project has three levers that are impacted by changes: Cost, Time and Quality. All these factors are impacted if we change the scope etc. in the current scenario. The client has increased the scope, reduced the timelines. This will adversely impact Quality and cost. Cost out our project will increase manifold and quality of the project will go down as one has to complete the additional scope in lesser timeframw.
Some alternatives that should be in place to solve this project is a strong change management control that helps the project team manage such changes effectively and charge the customer appropriately. Through change management or change control policy in place, project team will be able to push the reduced timelines as per the defined guidelines, request for a changed commercial order and agree on a final terms and conditions. These policies avoids conflict of interest of the team, client etc.
Some of the implications of not adhering to change management policies are delayed project, loss of face value to the customer as the team would have committed such change, delayed payments, or payments cancelled by client for not meeting expectation. In addition the project team will have to put extra efforts(man hours) with no additional benefits.
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