Why a Change Order Isn’t the End of the World As We Know It

By Laura Bamberg - Global Sales Administrator

Steelray Software

I have a friend who recently needed a change to a project made, and the Development department told her it would take them four days to make the change, even though she felt it should only take them two days. With a client breathing down her neck, this made her understandably frustrated. A simple change order could have resolved an issue that might have led to a possible loss of trust by one of her company’s largest clients.

Her company does not use a Microsoft Project Viewer software – to her detriment in this case. If she did use Steelray Project Viewer, this situation could have been more easily solved. How? Keep reading . . .

Change orders can be a real pain, but they are necessary. In Clarise Z. Doval Santos's post - The Importance of Scope Planning in Project Management – she states that, “[e]veryone affected by the project must understand that there is a process and even an associated cost for any scope change. The Scope Management Plan should be part of the Project Plan.”

We know this to be true, of course, but there are differing opinions on how detailed the scope change orders have to be.

“Any changes that are required during the life of the project must be formally planned and controlled to ensure that the impact of change stays within agreed parameters; there should be a documented change control procedure,” states the UK’s Office of Government Commerce in Introduction to Project Management Processes - Change Control and Issue Management. “The cost, time and quality parameters associated with the project should be established before implementation and monitored throughout the life of the project. All proposed changes should be costed and their effect on the overall project established before they can be authorised to go ahead.”

Xiaoming Wang posted a blog entry stating change orders should be more “goal-driven and not too detailed so that the team can be more creative during the implementation.”

Whatever your take on how comprehensive these change notifications need to be, suppose you operate as my friend’s company does. Now visualize that your project manager (or the person operating in that capacity - see our blog entitled Why Purchase Project Management Software?) uses Microsoft Project and can supply Steelray Project Viewer to his or her team. The project manager doesn’t want the team members to modify the project file but does need updates on their tasks. The manager writes the mpp project file in Microsoft Project Viewer and gives it out to his team via Steelray Project Viewer. Team members are then assigned their tasks with three update choices.

One of those choices is that the status of the task is “in process.” During the processing phase, you can edit the task,and the team member could have notified my friend with an update saying it will take four days, and there is no way it can be done in two. The project manager can then investigate and make a more realistic change order.

There are many reasons to use a software applications like ours. When it affects the status of your client relationships, it’s a no-brainer.

Join the discussion at http://www.steelray.com/discuss/ and let us know what your issues have been, and how software such as Steelray's has helped you solve them, or how we can do it better. We’re always listening!