Activity: Manage Change Requests

This activity ensures that due consideration is given to the impact of change on the project and that approved changes are made within a project in a consistent manner.

Description	Work Breakdown Structure	Team Allocation	Work Product Usage

Relationships

Parent Activities	Configuration & Change Management

Description

Having a standard, documented change control process ensures that changes are made within a project in a consistent manner and that the appropriate stakeholders are informed of the state of the product, changes to it and the cost and schedule impact of these changes.

Properties

Event Driven
Multiple Occurrences
Ongoing
Optional
Planned
Repeatable

Staffing

The Change (or Configuration) Control Board (CCB) oversees the change process, and consists of representatives playing various roles in RUP. Typically this includes managers, stakeholders (customers, end-users), developers, and testers. In a small project, a single person, such as the project manager or software architect, may be the only representative on the CCB. In the Rational Unified Process, this primary CCB role is the Change Control Manager.

Usage

Usage Guidance

While this work starts in Inception and continues throughout the lifecycle, it tends to gain importance as the lifecycle progresses. It is often much more formally managed in Transition than it starts out being managed in Inception.

This work is not considered optional, although project culture will mean this work will vary from being a small informal consideration to a larger more formal endeavor. Note that some CM environments may enable the Change (or Configuration) Control Board (CCB) function to be supported through process automation where rules can be established within a tool. This is particularly valuable where the CCB function must be managed across distributed teams.

Further explanation of these concepts, suggested tasks, and states of Change Requests are found in Concept: Change Request Management.

More Information

Concepts	Change Request Management