Revising the Change Theme

When revising the Change theme, make sure that you understand the areas set down in the checklists below. If you can’t confidently put a tick against any item, go and have a look at that area again.

Revision checklist – Foundation

Have a look at this list as you prepare to revise for the Foundation exam. For each item on the list, are you confident that you know it? If not, target it for more revision until you can tick it confidently.

The purpose statement for the theme – make sure you can recognise it to be able to identify missing words and know which theme the statement belongs to

Issues and the three sub-types – Request for Change, Off-specification, Problem/­concern – and who can submit an issue (anyone with an interest in the project or its outcome)

Concessions (for Off-specifications) and the need for Project Board authority to agree them

Formal and informal handling of issues – either a Daily Log entry or an Issue Report and Issue Register entry for each one

The content and use of an Issue Report and the Issue Register – and who’s responsible for them

The five steps in the issue and change control procedure – what the five steps are, what’s happening in each one and who’s doing what [Manual Figure 9.1, P2FD Ch16 Handling an issue]

Levels of authority for change – Project Board and Change Authority (which may be at any level between the board and the Project Manager)

The change budget – and its use as a trigger for escalating issues to a higher level of authority (for example, if a requested change would cost more than the Project Manager’s delegated change budget for a stage)

Why an issue may be escalated – the fit with exception management such as problem resolution estimated to breach the cost or time tolerance for a stage

The use of exception planning with change management – for large scale change beyond the limit of the change budgets

The five elements of the configuration management procedure

Configuration Management Strategy – where it’s created (Initiation), who’s responsible for it (Project Manager) and how it’s used in Initiation and then through the project

Configuration Item Record – why it’s needed and the sort of information it contains

Status accounting and the Product Status Account (the only report without the word ‘report’ in its title)

Revision checklist – Practitioner

Turning now to things you need just for Practitioner revision, have a look at these additional items. However, if you’ve already passed Foundation and come straight to this list, do look also at the Foundation checklist in the previous section. You need to be sure that you’re still up to speed on those elements.

Where issues are dealt with in the process model – Controlling a Stage to capture and examine issues, with advice from Project Assurance then action by the Project Manager or by escalating the issue to the Project Board

The contents and use of the Issue Register – from its creation in Initiation during work on the Configuration Management Strategy, through to its closure at the end of the project in the activity ‘Recommend project closure’

The contents and use of the Issue Report – to record the detail of a formally managed issue

The required characteristics of those appointed as Change Authorities [Manual Appendix C.8.2]

The contents and use of the Configuration Management Strategy and who’s responsible for it (Project Manager) – including where it may be updated, notably on a stage boundary

The scope of configuration management in a project – what’s in and what’s out

The contents and use of Configuration Item Records – where they may be created and used and by whom

The contents and use of the Product Status Account – where this report may be called for, the fact it can be applied to different sets of products, and who may use it