Christopher Thurman

Project manager (PM):

Project manager should involve to design and develop change management system and monitor the system. It is important to communicate the necessity of change management process and follow the process irrespective of the urgency. The project manager has to use the negotiation skills to find a solution when asked to implement a change that might jeopardize the project’s ability to deliver to the triple constraints.

Sponsor:

Sponsor will validate that the requested changes and review the results to provide a feedback whether they are in line with the original intent of the project. The sponsor heads the change control board.

Project team members:

Avoid making unauthorized changes and report any discrepancies.

The following six steps explains the process after designing a change management system—

Step 1: Making a change to the project

During project execution making a change to the project is the natural part of the project development. The change requests can come from anyone; team members, clients, sponsors, even the PM. Change requests can also come from people outside of the project, including functional organizations, vendors, and so on. The change request usually has to do with a discrepancy in what is planned for the product of the project. Discrepancies can cover specific functions of the product.

Step 2: Reviewing the change request

The PM will guarantee that every person on the team, or at least each area of the team, is represented during this review. In addition, the PM needs to make sure that the intention of the change request is clear to the team members. The PM should facilitate discussion until all team members’ questions are resolved. For large or complex change requests, the PM might consider asking the requestor to attend the review meeting so they can answer team questions.

Step 3: Determining the work to implement the change

Step 4: Accumulating the required work

With the accumulated information about the change request the proper sequence of the tasks involved will be determined which could be a mini project schedule just for this change.

Step 5: Analyze the impact of the change

The change request could impact the project plan or the requirements or both. By performing a ‘what if’ scenario, it can be determined exactly where the change request can be inserted into the existing project schedule to calculate the new critical path and the total cost of the change request based on the work estimates provided by the team.

Step 6: Having an Impact on the three constraints (Time, Budget, and Quality)

The next step is to determine the impact of the change on the constraints to the project. If even one of the triple constraints is affected by the change request, the approval from the CCB is necessary.

Cited

Baca, Claudia(2005). Project Manager’s Spotlight on Change Management. Sybex

Taylor, James C (2008). “Chapter 10 – Understanding the Project Change Process”. Project Scheduling and Cost Control: Planning, Monitoring and Controlling the Baseline. J. Ross Publishing.

Stakeholders of a project

When thinking of people who are stakeholders, one must think of everyone who is involved in this project. Stakeholders are the people who are important on the project. They are the party who can be affected or affects the project. It would be the people who without it the project would cease to exist. Also you must look at who will be greatly impacted by the project, if the project when well whose job would be the easiest. Likewise, if the project did not go well, who or whom would have a very hard time in their jobs.  Once the stakeholders are identified, then the person who is behind the project can be revealed, the project sponsor.

Project Sponsors

After you have identified everyone on the project who has a stake in it, there is only one person left. That person is the project sponsor. A project sponsor is the person or group of people who see that something needs to change and they have that authority to make that change happen. Without them mentioning the project, then it will never happen. The most important thing about a project sponsor is that there are not a lot of people in the company that have enough authority or influence to undertake the work and bring about the change in the project, but not only in that project in every project. For this reason the project sponsor would be the company board of directors if there is a board of directors. If there is not a board of directors, then the project sponsor would be a group of people. The first person would be the person who controls the daily operations; this person is also the lead stakeholder. Also, customers can to a certain extent be the project sponsor. The information about the person who controls the daily operation does have enough power in the company to influence. However, there is one person or people who have amazing power and they all might not know it. Every company does what they do for the customer. If the customer does not like something and there is enough of them, then that company will change in order to keep that customer. Likewise, if the company is doing something correct. Then the company will keep on doing what is correct in order to keep the customer happy. For this reason the customer can also be a project sponsor.

References:

MSH and UNICEF. 1998. Stakeholder Analysis. The Guide to Managing for Quality.  Retrieved
January 21, 2010 http://erc.msh.org/quality/ittools/itstkan.cfm

Wallace, Sam. 1999-20007. Project Definition.  Retrieved January 21, 2010.                http://www.epmbook.com/projdefwhy.htm