The Situation

• Was engaged to support a multi-year, multi-site, multi-project programme, for which the detailed design for later phases was left open to accommodate the changing needs of the business.
• As a result, the programme encountered a large number of requests for changes to the original design: some of them useful; many of them less useful.

The Task

• Was asked to implement a process to capture project change requests, and to ensure that only appropriate requests were implemented, without holding up project delivery unnecessarily.

The Action / Approach

• Devised a set of change control principles and process in liaison with stakeholders (essentially an approved change request was required for anything likely to cause an unfavourable impact, but no change request was required for anything that would have a beneficial effect).
• Created a Change Register (in Microsoft® SharePoint®) to document requests and their progress through the process.
• Held regular reviews of the Change Register first to sense-check new requests for “reasonableness” before spending any time and effort on evaluating impact, and then to
approve or reject open change requests to minimise any delays.

The Result

• Using this approach, the programme ruled out about a third of ~300 requests, rejecting ~£4m of unnecessary or inappropriate change.
• Thus the programme controlled costs and delivery without compromising quality or timescales.

Focus In On: Responsible for Project and Programme Delivery

New Areas of Value:

Higher proportion of projects fit for purpose, on time and on budget

Greater financial control and predictability in delivery

Improved project estimation and delivery capability (right first time)

Improvements around:

Disruption from business restructure or reprioritisations

Practice