responding post

SACHIN KUMAR CHAUDHARI ‘S Answer

A Project includes numerous small and big factors which play a critical role in shaping its final outcome. Whenever a project is decided to be launched, thorough research on its background and constituent factors is conducted. But almost every project lacks to identify all of its dependent and independent factors, hence inviting unplanned changes. Although changes are inevitable, but they can proof to be very beneficial for the project, if handled properly. This unplanned arousal of changes causing project’s scope, time line, quality and budget to be modified requires efficient change management plan to be a part of project management (Hornstein, 2015). A change management plan ensures that all the requested changes align with the project’s scope and do not alter the primary objective of client. An integrated change management plan warranties that changes proposed are approved by official committee and discussed with project team before implementation. Change management plan also makes it sure that introduction of change enhances the sustainability rate of project and minimizes obstructions in business performance.

The detailed analysis of Link case study identifies three major issues in project’s planning and execution which lead to changes (Torrens University Australia, 2020). 1 – Lack of research and background knowledge when deciding and allocating budget for project. 2 – Unavailability of leading person who would supervise complete project and chair the project management team. (Joint leading responsibility to project manager and technical manager) 3 – Absence of experience and project scope relevant skilled personals in senior committee of project management team. (Assigning business project manager for delivering IT project)

If above mentioned issues were to be resolved, scope of project would have been limited under specific boundaries, which would result in accurate prediction for budget. With a single leading person, having necessary IT project management experience and skills, it would have been much easier to handle project stakeholders and restrict changes before implementation.

Integrated change management is the best strategy in my opinion to handle this project efficiently (Wanner, 2013). Change Control Board should be established, and any changes requested should be passed through them. They would identify the changes based on their impact on scope, quality and cost of project. This committee will review every proposed change based on risk assessment plan and will update the plan with every proposed change. All the changes proposed by stakeholders will be documented and separated based on approval or rejection from change control board. Rejected proposals would be documented to save project management team from inconvenience in future and meetings would be held on approved change request. Ensuring consensus of team members and positive effects of change on project, it will be passed for implementation while keeping everything recorded in project’s documents. Budget and scope would be adjusted according to approved changes and several reviews will be done during and after execution of change. Continuous updating of risk assessment plan is the major component of integrated change management.

Project management software by “PROJECT MANAGER” can prove to very valuable as it assists the project management team by auto updating budget and time line based on introduced changes. It also provides feature of synchronous emails to team members (PROJECTMANAGER, 2020).

References

Hornstein, H. A. (2015). The integration of project management and organizational change management is now a necessity. International Journal of Project Management, pg. 291-298.

PROJECTMANAGER. (2020). Project Management Software Built for Ambitious Teams.

Torrens University Australia. (2020). Link Project Case Study: PROJ6003 Project Execution & Control: Assessment Case Study.

Wanner, M. F. (2013). Integrated change management: PMI® Global Congress 2013. New Orleans, LA. Newtown Square: Project Management Institute.