Change Requests overview

We have defined Change Requests as a significant change to the Business Requirements.  Change Requests in the application are not meant to be used to manage detailed Technical Changes (Configuration Management) or Contract Change Management.  Change Requests will likely result in Technical Changes and Contract Changes however.  Change Requests are considered significant, that is they are not meant for minor detailed changes. 

Change Requests are managed by the Project Manager.  A Change Request will always produce a Change Request Action Plan with associated task(s).  A Change Request may also result from the resolution of an Issue or Risk.  Change Requests will be related to projects and may be related to a task.  They will be assessed for priority and include justification.

Change Requests will require formal approval by the appropriate authority (such as delegate, sponsor, steering committee etc) prior to work being authorised.  The application does not manage the approval process, it relies on the Project Manager to update status, keeping status of Action plan and associated tasks as New until approved.

Defining the Change Request

The Change Request Item can be created by the Project Manager directly or from an Issues or Risk Action plan.  Change Requests share most attributes with Issues with the following differentiating attributes: 

The Project Manager will assess a Change Request and add Action Plans to the Change Request in a similar way to Issues. 

Change Request Action Plan(s)

Change Request Action Plans work in a similar way to Issue Action Plans but there is only one option and it is automatically raised:

Change Request Plan

A Change Request Plan captures new tasks & effort and/or new projects. 

Change Request Resolution Task(s) and Project(s)

A Change Request Action Plan includes one or more tasks and/or one or more projects created by the Project Manager.  The tasks have similar attributes to other tasks and appear in the Project Schedule with the other project tasks.  The Change request tasks have a status of ”r;New” until the Change Request is authorised and are not viewable by Team Members until their status is upgraded.