Have you every had a director of IT say on the night before the live of a new system, we are also going to bring up this module in its vanilla form to see how it works out. Oh the joys of evil vile scope creep! I’ll share with you a secret, the goal of a scope change process is not to always immediate scream no from the executive ivory towers. A scope change process is to assure that the risk is worth the rewards when it comes to scope change. So let’s talk about how to introduce a scope change process into a chaotic project management culture.

In a chaotic project management culture, the jack of all trades who can do it himself is rewarded, and will look like a cowboy forced to wear a three piece suit when feeling constrained by a scope change management process. Therefore do not introduce a process that constricts and is an obstacle, have it augment efficiency.

There are some common characteristics to a scope change management process.

• The approval of the change is aligned with the organization’s authority to act
• The sponsor approves the changes, before moving to the next level of authority
• The change request form clearly asks for the impacts and the benefits
• Requested Changes have a change number
• The process is agreed to by the sponsor before the project starts

When starting out, with this new process, I’d recommend the pmo clarifies with the IT leadership what is in and not in a scope management standard. We previously shared a scope management standard which can be used as a starting point for the standard. Also the purpose to a scope management process, has to vet at the decision level necessary the requested changes to project scope. After the IT leadership has agreed it makes sense, start organizing a couple of projects with this in the mix. Open discuss using the process with those project sponsors, and executive sponsors if applicable. The goal here is to gain buyin and suggestions as to a process which will work at your organization.

With a scope change management process your outcomes will be clear, the more time planning a commercial off the shelf implementation, the better the execution, and the lesser degree of scope changes. It will also help to engage the project sponsor.

Further Readings on Taming Chaotic Project Management:

• The Top Ten Characteristics of a Chaotic Project Management Environment
• Find out how many active projects are in flight.
• Establish your organization’s current and desired need of Healthcare IT
• Collaborate on Prioritization Decision Criteria
• Have a defined and approved process to accept work.
• How to stop running the daily meeting marathon
• Using the WBS to define deliverables
• How to know when you have a project and when you do not
• 8 Training Tips on how to develop project schedules

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