PART A

The only thing that is constant in life is change. It is inevitable, it’s better to be aware of the
importance of change and how to deal with it and how to become a winner from the whole
process of change management. The same goes true for the projects we work on. It’s important
to understand that why change is inevitable and what is its importance. In this article, we shall
cover upon these things so that we ready to accept the change and understand its importance to
deal in the best way with it.

Change management is managing change so to ensure the desired behavioral outcomes would
result and work towards ensuring the goal. Most often change management affects the
organization’s culture or mode of operating and it will be changed. This is usually desired when
any organization is implementing new business processes so, because of technological initiatives
and new application implementations.

Change management is not any easy-going process. It is difficult to change the way of working
and modify the processes to match the new application processes or needs. But it is not
impossible. A good project manager can ensure that change management is done smoothly and
thus ensure the project success too.

There are various key issues that lead to project changes; some of them are discussed below:
Stakeholder changes their mind: At any point in the project stakeholder could change their
mind. And this happens frequently. If their new opinion relates to the format or quality of the
output of the project then you’ll be making a change to incorporate their new ideas. Essentially,
this is a change to requirements.

Whenever new legislation or regulations is introduced this can result cause change to project
scope or requirements. You need to make sure that your business remains compliant and legally
allowed to trade. This could happen at any point in the project life cycle so the earlier you can be
aware of upcoming changes the better, as generally you will get some notice before new rules
come into effect.

Regulatory change: The project can become redundant by a legislative or regulatory change
that might take place during the project.

Poorly defined requirements: Another problem is of poorly set requirements. If the

requirements are poorly set during the definition phase of the project, it will impact the project
later when the building and development stages take place. Requirements change can also lead to
scope creep and contradictory requirements, resulting in a bad state of the project, and can also
lead to stakeholder conflicts.
Change in Sponsorship: The project may acquire new sponsors in its lifetime. With a new
sponsor comes new ideas. Whether the project is changed voluntarily because of the benefits of
the project or it is replaced through resignation or redundancy, whoever becomes the new in
charge will be handling and forming the approaches for doing things.

Business Strategy Change: A change in direction could result in changes to the scope or
requirements on your project. this could happen at any point in the project: business strategies
are often under constant review for competitive threats, even if in principle the organization has
published a three- or five-year strategic plan.

Updated Technology: Technical updates can introduce changes to your project. in the case of
my project, we shifted our approach to deploy the latest version of the software for the teams
who came later in the deployment schedule and then went back and upgraded the ones who had
it first. This resulted in a change to scope and it made the overall project longer as there was
effectively rework to do. But we all agreed it was a sensible approach and one that we had seen
coming.

Not Enough Resources: If you don’t have enough people (or money, or equipment) to do
everything you want to then you might be forced to change the project to get by. For example, if
you’re building an estate of new houses and you run out of time or money towards the end, you
might finish off the last few to a lower spec than the first ones. Top of the range taps? No thanks,
just the basic ones will do fine.