Impact of Change Management on Benefit Realization

Summary    

Changes in external factors and market conditions, and changes due to organizational complexity are increasingly impacting projects. Effectively managing these changes is vital to success. 

Impact of the managed changes on the benefits

The project team routinely reviews the change request raised by team members.  Major changes are also referred to the Project Steering Committee and the Project Sponsor. It is good practice not to leave any significant change request open for long as this might have a very negative effect on the program afterwards.

The change requests are examined from the point of view of milestones, budget, risks, performance, capacity and contingencies.  In addition, this best practice recommends that the change requests be examined from the point of view of their impact on benefits.  Changes involving large increases in costs must be referred back to the Sponsor and the Benefit Owner to avoid situations that could reverse the fundamental cost-benefit balance.  Corresponding benefit increases should be secured and agreed before a new baseline is determined.

Changes that involve significant shifts in milestones can push the deliverables of the program beyond the intended window of opportunity; in other words, the deliverables might be too late to generate the benefits.