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The project manager will also analyze the schedule, the budget, and the resource

allocation to determine what impacts will occur as a result of the change. This
information is documented (a template comes in handy here as well) and then
presented to the review committee, typically called a change control board, for
approval or rejection.

Evaluating the impacts of the change request may include what CompTIA calls a
regression plan. You can think of this as the ability to reverse changes or back out the
changes and revert to the previous state. Information technology projects often have a

rollback plan (or reverse-changes plan). If the change does not perform as expected,
you can go back to the previously known, working state.

Keep in mind there is always an opportunity cost involved when analyzing change.
When you ask your subject-matter experts to stop working on their tasks in order to
examine the impacts of the change request, their work on the project comes to a stop.
This trade-off can be difficult to balance sometimes. There isn’t a hard and fast rule on

this. You’ll have to keep an eye on the progress of the project work and the number of
requests coming in. I sometimes track the number of hours spent by the team on
change request analysis and report this to the stakeholders during our project status
meetings. It helps them to be aware of the potential impact to the project if the change
requests get out of hand, and if you have a savvy stakeholder group, they’ll begin to
self-discipline themselves and curtail frivolous requests.

Change Control Board

In many organizations, a change control board is established to review all change
requests and approve, deny, or defer the request. CCB members might include
stakeholders, managers, project team members, and others who might not have any
connection to the project at hand. Some organizations have permanent CCBs that are
staffed by full-time employees dedicated to managing change for the entire

organization, not just project change. You might want to consider establishing a CCB
for your project if the organization does not have one.

A basic CCB assigns approval authority equally among the key stakeholders on the
project. Complex projects or projects that involve one business area more than others
may require approval authority weighted toward that business unit. For example, let’s
say you’re implementing a new recruitment software program for the human resources
department. A change request is submitted that has to do with the recruitment

business process and primarily only affects the human resources department. In this
case, the human resources stakeholder should have more say in the decision on the
change request than other stakeholders.

Typically, the board meets at regularly scheduled intervals. Change requests and the
impact analysis are given to the board for review, and they have the authority to
approve, deny, or delay the requests. You should note their decision on the change

request log shown in Table 9.1.

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