COEPD – Center of Excellence for Professional Development Happy Learning
Change management is a phenomenon of dealing with any changes within organisation’s goals, technologies etc. it can be any transition or transformation within the organisation. This comes into picture when a company wants to implement new strategies for the changes they want to make. It can in line with an effect of change, the way change is controlled and while helping people adapting this change.
Change request is proposal from stakeholders in the software development process, which is related to something in a product or product process.
Change request means that any requirement which was not scoped as a part of the initial business requirement document, and must be managed under a proper change management/control technique and the BA along with PM has to carefully review and follow a rigorous change control process.
The seven R’s of change management are the most important factors to consider throughout the change management process.
This 7 R’s of Change Management Checklist is made up of seven simple questions:
- Who raised the change?
Answer:
This can be mostly done by the senior management who has the authority of making organisational changes. A system should be made to record all these changes. This single “system of record” is especially useful during audits. It should also be able to control change handoffs across functional areas.
- What is the reason for the change?
Answer:
This tells us why a particular change came into picture and why is it important to do this change. This can be regarding:
- Any increase in capacity in any project element which is related to the company.
- Any increase in availability of any particular thing.
- Any risk in security can also be a reason for a change.
Irrespective of the reason for the change the person raising the change has to provide a appropriate evidence or any argument to support his/her push for the change.
- What return is required from the change?
Answer:
This tells us that what a particular change should result in after made. It can be in terms of finance, or priority determination between strategic and project driven change. Business analysts will help the stakeholders to understand the impact, the change request will have on the organisation and to help minimize negative impact that results from that particular change.
- What are the risks involved in the change?
Answer:
When making a change there has to be certain risks involved with it. It can be minor as losing data while updation or major like company going out of business. It depends on a company that how much risk is it willing to bear after the change is implemented making sure that the operations of an organisation are not hampered.
- What resources are required to deliver the change?
Answer:
When a change is made, there would be some resources like hardware, software, development teams etc. for making this change to happen. We also need to make sure that the required skills are available to make the change and also the assets.
- Who is responsible for the “build, test, and implement” portion of the change?
Answer:
The kind of change to be done will determine who is responsible to make this change. When it comes to change management whether or not to incorporate the changes, depends on yet another important factor which is for the business analyst as well as the project manager to ensure whether the requested change is a complex one or just a minor change.
- What is the relationship between this change and other changes?
Answer:
This tells us whether the changes are interrelated or not, whether a particular change might affect any other change made or not. Change relationships need to be determined from within and across functional boundaries. In case the change is complex, it will not only expand the scope of the project drastically which in turn leads to increase in delivery time.
