A rigorous, formal change approval process will enable you to maintain control of your resources and integrate approved changes into the product or project development flow. Many large development organizations already have a formal change proposal review and approval process in place and if that is the case in your organization, count yourself blessed. If it is not, then it may be worth your while to read on and understand why it is so important.
A change approval process maintains your resource control
Post requirements baseline changes are trouble – the purpose of the baseline was to drive a stake in the ground that signaled the beginning of development and a large increase in the rate of spending. Before you “just say no” to a proposed change, however, you must understand the change and its impact. Some proposed changes are necessary for the product to succeed, whereas others are only nice to have. Among the necessary changes are those that “fix” a bad requirement; those that add forgotten, but needed requirements; and those that alter existing good requirements to meet a new customer or market goal or objective. Almost all change proposals, if approved, will require some development rework, overloading your critical, limited resources. Your team cannot build a product or solution to a moving target. You must limit the changes to those that are absolutely necessary.
A rigorous change proposal review process gives proposed changes in visibility before implementation. It ensures that you will know about all change proposals, their justification, and their cost. It also enables you to veto the proposals that are unnecessary or impossible within existing resource allocation. It protects individuals on the development team from external change pressure.
A formal change approval process helps integrate changes into the development flow
Once a change is approved, you must quickly and fully integrate it into the project or product development flow. You must do this change implementation without knocking the entire development effort off track. A rigorous change proposal review process gives you and your team the data required for thorough project re-planning and change implementation. This data includes a complete assessment of the change impact and its cost.
Summary
The key is to first understand the importance of your requirements to the overall engagement and the need to baseline those requirements and protect them carefully. No change should go through without close scrutiny and the customer must be onboard from the point of project kickoff with the need to control the project scope in order to help ensure project success. Preach the problems that can and will arise from continually changing requirements because the need for good upfront requirements can never be under-emphasized.