With the many changes that we face today, it is certain that even projects will also encounter a lot of changes. Changes can help ensure that the project is aligned with the needs of the organization. Change control is a very important process in project management. It ensures that all changes proposed during the project are defined, reviewed as well as approved before they are even implemented. It avoids all unnecessary changes that can disrupt the project. Moreover, it also ensures that the changes will not affect the resources.
There are different stages involved in change control and these include the change proposal, impact summary, decision-making, implementation of change and closing. All of these stages are necessary for adapting good changes within the project.
Change control tools are used to facilitate change management as well as the resulting decisions. Manual or automated tools can be used depending on the needs of the stakeholders. Other considerations that influence the type of change control tools include environmental and organizational constraints.
Once the decision to adopt changes have been implemented, communication must take place to the stakeholders.
This project management term is defined in the 5th edition of the PMBOK.