Change Management Process and Deliverables

The process of change management process is the process of determining attainability, requesting, the work of planning and implementation, and the final evaluation in a company. This is important for a business because to grow and reach the next level the business frequently needs to change, and sometimes this change may be a major one. Understanding the change management process and deliverables will help here. It has become so important that change management has become a management theory and the company often refers to it when changes in an organization are imminent.

The two main goals it has are: supporting the processing of changes – and enabling traceability of changes, which we would be analyzing in this article.

What are Deliverables?

Deliverables are defined as the data that is put in use in every activity in a change-management.

Besides activities, deliverables form an integral part of any change management project. These concepts or deliverables have been described in a table below; here the concepts that are most important are: CHANGE LOG ENTRY and CHANGE REQUEST.

The concepts of data that comes under the head of Deliverables have been described in the table below. Furthermore, some other concepts (e.g. SYSTEM RELEASE, CHANGE REQUEST) lend themselves for the versioning approach.

Deliverable Concepts :	Name And Description
Concept	Description
REQUIREMENT	A required component’s functionality
PROBLEM REPORT	This is a document where the problem that the employee is unable to solve is mentioned. This document contains the contact information of the person who has reported the problem, the date, cause of the problem, its description and location, and also the action taken.
CHANGE REQUEST	This documents the change request and why such change is necessary. It can come from system enhancements, problem reports, and even the system and the senior management. These are documented as ‘Requirements’. Here it needs to be decided whether the change is going to be administered or not.
CHANGE LOG ENTRY*	This included the change technical feasibility, the Request for the change, the benefits and the costs involved, the impact of the change, how to plan for it and the verification too. However they become irrelevant if this change is not administered.
CHANGE TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY	The change may need software and hardware and other technical resource for the system that has been proposed. It has to be determined whether they can be developed or acquired in a timely manner.
CHANGE COSTS AND BENEFITS	What is the effort that has to be put in and whether the advantages are good enough in terms of increased revenue or reduced costs to put that in? This is also referred to as economic feasibility.
CHANGE IMPACT ANALYSIS	What is going to be the extent of such a change?
CHANGE PLANNING	Designing the objective and the method to reach the desired results.
ITEM	Referred to any subsystems, system, product, subassemblies, assemblies, sets, units, computer programs, accessories, parts or software.
CHANGED ITEM*	This is an item that existed before but has gone through change.
TEST REPORT	This is the report where the results of the test and its nature are documented for all future references.
DOCUMENTATION	Documentation is very important for the future. This works like a guide when any reference is made to the change that was initiated. Future employees come to know why the change was required and how it was administered.
CHANGE VERIFICATION	Yes the change was planned and it was done so to achieve some results – but was the results achieved? Was the change successful? This needs to be verified.

These then are the major concepts that fall under the category of deliverables in a “change” management project. However, before making use of any of the deliverables, one needs to have a clear idea about the difference between “change”, “deviation” and “waiver”.

In every organization, there are people who are opposed to the change simply because of the fact that they do not want to stick their neck out from their comfort zones. But when a change is required it has to be administered – there cannot be any second thoughts about this, as otherwise the business would suffer. And so, the change process and the deliverables need to impress upon them that the change is indeed good for the company and thus necessary.

When dealing with changes, the waivers and deviations also need to be distinguished. When there needs to be a shift from the requirements, the authorization of such a shift is the deviation. A waiver is much the same but once this shift has taken place. They are seen as a minimalistic management of change wherein, the problem was not really dealt with. Once these concepts are clear, the above-mentioned deliverables are ready to be put in use.