Managing Change (CMMI)

You can use change request work items to track and control all changes to the project. All change requests are initiated as the result of a deviation from the baseline, which consists of the original requirements that were identified for the project. For example, if a meeting with a user uncovers new requirements, a change request should be created to propose updating the requirements baseline.

In this topic

Creating a Change Request

Analyzing a Change Request

Before a change request is analyzed, it should be triaged by a configuration control board. A configuration control board is a group of people who are responsible for approving and denying change requests and who ensure that changes are implemented correctly. You can indicate that a request must be triaged by setting the Triage field in the work item to Pending. For more information, see Change Request (GovDev). Analysis of change requests can be a drain on resources, and it is important that the change request queue does not put undue demands on the team and affect the project timeline.

A change request should be analyzed to determine the scope of its impact on existing and planned work. The effect must be known so that it can be used to estimate the cost in person-hours to implement the change.

Analyze the risk of accepting the change. Are external teams dependent upon the code or feature that would be changed, and could their schedules be adversely affected? Could assignment of resources to this change adversely affect other important feature areas or requirements of the product?

As part of your analysis, request input from stakeholders and add that input to the change request work item. If the change requires changes to other planning documents, note that in the change request, and change those documents as appropriate. This will maintain the revision history and enable everyone to see the details. This mitigates risk from bad communication.

If a change request is accepted, change the State from Proposed (the default for new change requests) to Active.

Monitoring Change Requests

While a change request is active, you can monitor it by using the Change Request query located in the Change Managment work item query folder for the GovDev for TFS 2010 v1.0 process template used for the project. Change requests should be processed in a reasonable amount of time.

If a change request does not receive the attention that it requires, escalate the matter by creating an issue work item. Link the new issue to the change request, and escalate the issue to get the change request impact assessment on track.