Managing Change In Project Management

Effective Change Management Techniques

Corwin Corporation was taking up a new project for the development of the specialized product which for the first time included R&D work for a client, Peters Corporation. The company had been very stringent while taking up the projects earlier and always abiding by their policies that allowed the teams to take only those projects with potential of same margins as other products, possibility of follow up contracts, ability to develop a new product line, and causing minimum disruption to the existing product lines. The Peter company’s product did offer an option to create a new product line as well as possibility of follow up contracts (Michigan Department of Transportation, 2005).

However, the margins were tight and the project could not be done with a minimum disruption. Major changes were required to be done. The company was sitting on the holiday season where most senior level employees were on leave and when the company had to take fast decisions, they decided to involve people from manufacturing department for handling project unlike the earlier projects that were previously handled by people from marketing departments. Also, because of addition of an in-house representative from the client organization, there was a cultural clash. In this situation, the company was required to establish some change control processes.

Adoption of the new project needed several changes to be made in the way organization worked on previous projects. These changes included:

• The company was marketing driven and thus, had a marketing person always leading the project but due to unavailability of the marketing manager, the company had to give the lead to a person from the engineering department.
• As the person was chosen from the engineering department for managing project, the person was not already used to working on project processes and thus, was required to learn them in the short span of time
• The company was required to accept an in-house representative from the client organization which needed adjustments in the way people worked with each other. As the new person was unfamiliar with the working environment and did not agree with the direction taken by the company and thus, changes were to be made in the project direction with addition of tests and creation of new testing environment
• The new person in the company had his say in company decisions on the project and had been taking control over the team work to shift the direction of the project. The project manager despite being the leader on paper had to listen to the Ray who was the in-house representative and bend rules accordingly.
• With the new representative leading the project, the people working on the project had to work as per him and not their old company manager.

Choice of Project Manager from Engineering Department left the new person in lack of control as he was not used to dealing with project management. Because of this lack of control, Ray could take over the control and decide on project direction. Because of Ray taking control over the decision and adding new tests to the project. This increased the scope of the project in the due time (PM4DEV, 2016).

With the entry of the new person and the conflicts cause between the project manager West and in-house representative Ray, the project changed direction twice with new tests introduction that needed modification of the test matrix. With new tests, satisfactory results could still not be obtained and the project got delayed in its delivery on time. By the time, the project had already reached the initial deadline, the company was only planning for new matrix to introduce to get the project back on track (Wickboldt, 2011).

With no previous clarity on the tests to be added and the freedom taken  by Ray, new tests were introduced that needed new environment to be developed for testing. Because of this change, the cost increased for the company and the project could not be completed on the budget as the company got into a cost overrun situation (SAEO, 2015).

As the two people working on the project were from different companies, they had different specifications for tests. There was no clarity on what tests to be performed and no preparation for how they would deliver the right results. This resulted into dissatisfactory results of the tests performance and thus, the quality of the project suffered (Michigan Department of Transportation, 2005).

A number of different management techniques could be used for bringing and controlling change in the organization such as:

• A formal plan could have been laid out for managing change needed in the organization. It would have included an understanding of what activities were to be executed and by whom. Who would be assuming responsibilities and who would be accountable for them could be known. A project management plan could have been prepared recording details like project scope, roles and responsibilities, risk management and so on. A WBS could have been prepared identifying various tasks to be completed and the resources and timelines assigned(State of Kansas, 2011).
• Risks could have been estimated and the mitigation and contingency measures to be planned so that in the case of issues occurring on the project, immediate actions could be taken with minimum disruption to the project. A risk matrix could have been prepared identifying various risks, their impacts on project, likelihood of occurrence, and mitigation measure to be taken(Galway, 2004).
• Clear responsibilities should have been assigned to the staff by identifying who was responsible for which task as well as identifying who was accountable for the same. A RACI matrix could have been used by the project manager to have this clear demarcation which could have helped the project go smooth and does not face over interference from an external person(Resuriz & Elizondo, 2010).
• A change control process could have been used such that every change demanded that was varying from planned course of action was documented properly in a form giving all details. This would have given clarity on who demanded change, how could change impact project, if the requested would get desired results, and so on so that only changes delivering results were selected using a formal process(Ali Heydari, 2013).                                   

Change Request Form

Project Name	New Rubber Product Material R&D and Production	Date	17/08/2018
Project Number	1	Requestor	Patrick Ray
Project Manager	Dan West	Project Owner	B. Royce

Describe the Requested Change
Addition of 5 new tests
Creation of new test environment for new tests
Procurement of new materials for setting up test environment

Describe the Reason for the Request
Previous tests did not deliver desired results
the project need a change in direction
Demanded by client
Describe Alternative Options
Risk Identification/Analysis
The new tests can still fail and not deliver satisfactory results
If new tests do not give desired results, the project would need another change in direction with addition of other tests
If project costs get escalated, extra cots would be borne by Corwin
Impact Analysis
Work Products to be Modified	Version Number
1.  Test procedures & Environment	1
2.  Project schedule	1
3.  Materials to procure for test (Quigley, 2017)	1
Describe the impact of the suggested change to work that is already complete.

Quality Impact
Additional Quality Assurance or Quality Control Activities
1.  Review meeting between project manager and stakeholders to verify requirements
2.  Change register to record changes, their approval status, responsible person, and impact on project
3.  QA Review to check project progress
Describe the impact of the change to quality assurance activities and quality control activities.
Schedule Impact
New Deliverables Description	Effort Hours	Date Required	Impact to Other Delivery Dates
1.  New 5 tests to be added	50	20th Aug 2018	Delays added
2.  Changes in the testing procedures	10	30th Aug 2018	Delays added
3.  Project needing new testing environment to be set up	20	20th Sept 2018	Delays added
Based on the impact, state the estimated date for implementing the requested change.  State the new estimated project completion date.

Budget Impact
New Deliverables Description	Lessen or Eliminate Other Expenses? Please describe.	Cost of New Deliverable	Total
1.  New 5 tests to be added	$30,000 already invested		$30,000
2.  Changes in the testing procedures		$12,000 would be added	$12,000
3.  Project needing new testing environment to be set up		$6,700 added	$6,700
Describe the overall impact to budget/cost.

Decision
		Approved		Rejected
		Approved with modifications		Deferred
Justifications
Additional Comments

Conclusions

This report discusses the case of Corwin Corporation that had taken  up a new project for the development of the specialized product from a big client, Peters Corporation. The company had been very stringent while taking up the projects earlier but this time it relaxed some of its rules and made an urgent call on the project. However, the project got intro troubles with changes happening in the organization. The report discussed the needed changes that included change in project scope, change in control structure, and change in working style. The company needed to adopt change control procedures to be able to tackle these issues which it did not. Some of the change management tools that could have helped the organization were identified including RACI matrix for resource management, WBS for task management, and risk matrix for risk management. it was found that with appropriate change control planning, many issues could have been avoided and the project could have succeeded.

References

Ali Heydari. (2013). Types of contract in Project management. RoyalPoolir .

Galway, L. (2004). Quantitative Risk Analysis for Project Management. Rand Corporation.

Michigan Department of Transportation. (2005). Quality Assurance and Quality Control Process Guide For Project Managers. MDOT Trunkline Projects.

PM4DEV. (2016). Project Quality Management: PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATIONS. PM4DEV.

Quigley, R. (2017). Quality Assurance/ Quality Control. FDOT.

Resuriz, R., & Elizondo, T. (2010). Quality Assurance/Quality Control Plan. ASARCO .

SAEO. (2015). Cost Estimating Manual for Projects . SAEO.

State of Kansas. (2011). Change Control Process Guide. Department of Administration, Division of Information Systems and Communications (DISC).

Wickboldt, J. A. (2011). A framework for risk assessment based on analysis of historical information of workflow execcution in IT systems. LUME.