Requirements Change Management - Requirements Engineering and Management for Software Development Projects - page 123

T able 8.4 Change request form

8.7 Progress/Status Reporting of CRs

Normally the status of implementation, progress of CR resolution and CR metrics
are reported as a component of the Weekly Status Reports to the concerned
executives. This serves the purpose of providing historical records and alerting
senior management to the need for intervention where necessary or warranted.

8.8 Handling the Impact of CRs

Once we determine the impact of the CRs, we need to make a decision on how to
handle the impact. We have the three options:

1. Absorb the impact. Ensure that the schedule and cost are not affected.
2. Pass on the impact to the customer completely. Customer will approve delayed
deliveries, and pay extra for the additional effort spent on implementing the
CRs.
3. Absorb partially for small CRs and pass on the impact of the bigger CRs to the
customer.

One important aspects or one of the most important aspects is that we need to
set a policy for handling the impact of the CRs and make it a part of the contract to
ensure that the CRs do not cause a rift between the project team and the customer.
More often than not, contracts miss this aspect of handling the impact caused by
the CRs. Some of such organizations have ended up fighting in a court of law.
I recommend the following strategy:

1. Absorb the impact of small CRs, that is, any CR requiring 2 person hours or
less. But this is subject to a limit of 1 % of the estimated effort for the project.
That is small CRs would continue to be absorbed until the cumulative effort
spent in implementing small CRs reaches the absorption limit