How to evaluate a large project change request

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Project change requests are a common occurrence. Occasionally, a change request can be extensive, requiring additional analysis. Here are questions to ask to provide the change review board with the information it needs to approve a major change request.

Will the change increase project complexity? Organizations often have a standard set of parameters for assessing a project change. Cost, scope, schedule, and quality are common. Very few organizations assess the impact on complexity. The number of stakeholders, technology required, use of innovative tools and other items contribute to complexity. Increased complexity can increase risk, cost, and necessitate additional resources. 

Could the change increase tension between key stakeholders? Evaluate project changes to determine whether they will increase stakeholder tension. For example, changes that increase tension include: 

  • Prioritization issues – where different areas of the business assign different priorities to the use of project funds and time
  • Process conflicts – where a process change benefits one area of the business and burdens another. For example, streamlining processing of travel reimbursement may make the Human Resources job easier, while creating issues for finance.

Are there schedule and expectation differences? – When new stakeholders are in different time zones or countries, answering questions and reviewing deliverables may take longer. In addition, stakeholders who are already expecting a specific timeframe could be unhappy about the delay. Also, the deliverables may be more complex when other countries’ requirements are integrated into the solution.

Do risks impact hard constraints? Many projects have hard constraints – conditions that can’t be compromised. For example, a project to make changes to meet a new law must finish before the law goes into effect. In another example, you must add certain features to your product to leapfrog your competition. Any change that puts a hard constraint at risk needs to be scrutinized before approval. 

Does the sponsor support the change (in private)? A sponsor may voice support for a change in a public setting due to hierarchical or political realities. They may share concerns with you in private. You change analysis should investigate those private concerns. This conversation with your sponsor can be useful downstream as well; if the change is approved, you know impacts to monitor to keep your sponsor informed. 

What additional analysis do you do for large change requests? Do you process them differently? If so, share with us in the comments section.

For more about project changes, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

Coming Up:

Office Hours– On August 9, Sam Yankelevitch and I will talk about overcoming obstacles for global and remote project teams. Working remotely is a reality today: it’s increasingly important to pay attention to the quality of our interactions with our distant colleagues. Language, culture, and distance influence the way we work together with stakeholders on our projects. We can either leave these factors to chance, or we can learn to leverage them to improve our project outcomes.

Is Your Project Idea Ready for Launch?

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Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Project ideas pop up all the time, but that doesn’t mean they are all worth pursuing. Companies want to reap enough benefits from the time and money they spend on projects. To make sure a candidate project is worthwhile, someone needs to complete some prerequisites before the project is launched.

Who gets these prerequisites in place when the project idea is so early in initiation? Management might ask a project manager to work on them. And that person might become the project manager if the project is approved — but also might not. If the organization has a project management office, a PMO staff member could take on this work.

Here are the prerequisites that ensure a candidate project is worth pursuing:

An engaged sponsor. For a project to succeed, the sponsor needs to believe in the project’s business value. That’s because the sponsor:

  • supplies time and funding to determine if the project is viable
  • identifies the research the project requires
  • decides the degree of risk the business is willing to accept
  • figures out business priorities
  • works through conflicts if key stakeholders disagree about the project’s focus

A clear goal. There should be a clear definition of the candidate’s project outcomes. The definition can be high-level. The sponsor and key stakeholders need to understand and agree on these outcomes. (Project initiation then focuses on picking the approach to create those outcomes.) The viability of the project also depends on resource availability, the ability to change business processes, and dependence on old systems that may be difficult to alter.

Available business analyst skills. Some projects focus on improving the way the organization does business. Others produce a new product or service. Business analysts and members of the business need to work together to evaluate these opportunities. It’s tempting to sketch out new processes or envision new products without thorough research and engaging business analysts. Skipping this effort adds risk and increases the chance of inaccurate assumptions that lead to project failure.

An understanding of priorities and budget. Organizations have only so much money to spend on projects. And they also prioritize projects based on how they support the organizations’ goals and objectives. Whoever evaluates the candidate must identify the candidate’s budget and priority. Otherwise, people might view the project as a waste of time or out of line with management’s objectives. 

An experienced project manager. The chance of project success increases when an experienced project manager takes the helm. The level of experience depends on factors like the project’s significance, complexity, and size. For instance, someone trained in project management but with little experience could handle a small, lower-priority project (and gain experience at the same time). A critical and complex project will need a senior project manager.

Who has performed these early steps in projects you’ve worked on? Are there other steps you’ve seen performed before launch? If so, share with us in the comments section.

For more about launching a project, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

Coming Up:

Office Hours– On August 9, Sam Yankelevitch and I will talk about overcoming obstacles for global and remote project teams. Working remotely is a reality today: it’s increasingly important to pay attention to the quality of our interactions with our distant colleagues. Language, culture, and distance influence the way we work together with stakeholders on our projects. We can either leave these factors to chance, or we can learn to leverage them to improve our project outcomes.

Dealing with a Project Budget Cut

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The dynamics in business could lead to a project budget cut. While it’s disruptive and triggers emotion, the situation isn’t impossible to manage. Here are tips on dealing with a budget cut. 

  • Keep calm. You might interpret a budget cut as failure. A budget cut is a business decision, which requires a well-thought out response. Continue to lead your team like the project is still viable…because it is. 
  • Understand the rationale for the cut. You need to understand what triggered the budget cut to figure out how to respond to it. Discuss the cut with your sponsor to understand their thinking. Different responses are required when a cut is due to a business-wide cost reduction, versus something related to your project management approach or a project outcome whose priority has changed.  
  • Review project priorities. The project still has expectations to meet and outcomes to deliver. Affirm those expectations and compare them to what the reduced budget will allow. Review project requirement priorities and change them as needed. Re-examine the project business case to help your prioritization. If you haven’t prioritized your requirements, do that first, and then determine what you can deliver with your reduced budget. 
  • Look for cost-saving approaches. Reducing contractor hours, cutting extra product features, and cutting risky (and therefore costly) requirements are potential ways to reduce overall project cost. Create a comprehensive list of options for management review. When management decides which cost reduction actions to take, edit and refine your project plan accordingly.
  • Communicate! Tell your sponsor and key stakeholders what the project’s new budget can deliver. Negotiate to figure out the best approach and align expectations. Share the new expectations and revised project plan with your project team. Emphasize that the project will continue to move forward. To maintain team morale, discuss the business outcomes the project can deliver. For added motivation,  ask your sponsor to communicate that message as well.

Have you ever faced a budget cut in a project? What emotions did it induce in you and your team? What steps did you take to “shake off” the feelings and think about how to move forward?

For more about project budgets, check out Bob McGannon’s Project Management Foundations: Budgets course.

Coming up:

LinkedIn Office hours-Overcoming Obstacles for Global and Remote Project Teams

August 9th at 1:00pm ET

Working remotely is a reality today: it’s increasingly important to pay attention to the quality of our interactions with our distant colleagues. Language, culture, and distance influence the way we work together with stakeholders on our projects. We can either leave these factors to chance, or we can learn to leverage them to improve our project outcomes.

How to Manage Project Reviews or Audits

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A project review is typically run from within an organization, while an external compliance-monitoring organization, such as a consulting firm or government agency, often conducts a project audit. Without the proper perspective, a project review or audit can be like a trip to the dentist. Here are different management approaches you should take with project reviews and audits to make them as constructive as possible.

  • Understand the scope of the exercise. The first step to support a review or audit is to understand its scope and intent. Typically, the primary topics are: 1. compliance with documented processes or accepted practices and 2. the mindful use of money. For a supportive review, share the available documentation concerning the project so the review team can select what they want to review. Government audits (or reviews that are trying to target errors rather than educate or be supportive) are a different story. For these, ask the audit or review team what documentation they require and provide that. This will limit the scope of the audit/review and make the exercise easier to manage. Note: you might be tempted to flood auditors with lots of documentation to show your project control capability. However, that usually backfires, because it gives auditors more targets to investigate.
  • Gather information on your project management processes. Have artifacts ready to show that you’ve conformed with agreed-to project management processes. If you haven’t complied with a documented process, demonstrate that you consciously did that with management’s concurrence so you can provide that to the review or audit team. Documentation that review teams typically request include risk or change logs, your project schedule with notes on the assumptions used to build it (like team member availability of 30 hours per week), and decision logs.
  • If you discover that you overlooked a process, proactively create an action plan to correct that oversight. Say you’re preparing for a review or audit and find an obvious deficiency. Correct it by developing an action plan to implement the overlooked process. If there is time before the review or audit begins, document progress against your action plans. The team may still ask questions about this oversight. However, reviewers and auditors usually react positively to proactive corrective actions.
  • Document important conversations. A project management best practice is to document key conversations, especially when the people involved made decisions. However, you might discover that some conversations slipped through the cracks. If you discover gaps in your documentation, go back and fill them in including signatures from the parties to the agreement. DON’T backdate the documents you create. (Use the current date, even though that highlights belated documentation.) If the reviews or audit team discovers your backdating practice, your integrity will be in question, which results in more scrutiny that will cause interruptions and delay you from returning to the job of delivering your project.
  • Answer questions.– If the review or audit is focused on compliance and not supportive of you and the project team, answer only the questions asked. Based on the approach of a supportive review team, use your judgment and share information you believe is constructive. You should manage auditors differently, because they are searching for compliance items to scrutinize. “The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” should be shared with auditors…but don’t go beyond the scope of the question asked. Doing so will raise more questions and potentially expand the scope of the audit. Coach your project team members to follow this practice and things will be easier to manage. It’s also wise to debrief team members questioned by auditors and log the exchanged questions and answers. That makes it easier to respond to follow up queries from auditors or get clarification when an audit team comes to a conclusion that doesn’t reflect reality.
  • If auditors are on track to discover something, share the issue and ask for advice. Trying to hide something ends badly when auditors discover deception. (We’ve watched enough police procedural TV shows to know that!) Develop an action plan to address the problem and then share the issue and plan with the audit team and ask for their advice. Using the audit as an improvement opportunity is a positive outcome, which is much better than being seen as someone who didn’t pay proper attention to project governance and tried to hide it. Be as open as possible with a supportive review team. You might find they have experience, hints and tips that will help your project and help you in your project management career.

If you have any tips on how to handle audits and reviews, share with us in the comments section!