"The sponsor asks for a new feature. What should the project manager do first?" Questions like this are among the most common on the PMP exam. The answer almost always follows the same process: integrated change control.
The five steps
- Capture the change request. Write it down formally, even if it came from the sponsor in a hallway chat.
- Analyse the impact. Look at scope, schedule, cost, quality, risk and resources together. A "small" feature can still delay testing or need new approvals.
- Present options to the decision-maker. That may be the change control board (CCB), the sponsor or the product owner, depending on your governance.
- Record the decision. Approved, rejected or deferred, it goes into the change log.
- If approved, update and communicate. Update the baselines and plans, then tell everyone affected.
The traps PMI likes to test
- "Just add it, the sponsor asked." Even sponsor requests go through impact analysis. Seniority doesn't skip the process.
- "Refuse it, the scope is fixed." Changes can add real value. The project manager assesses them; they don't block them.
- "The team built it quietly." Unapproved work is scope creep. Review it, assess the impact and reinforce the process.
- Updating only one plan. An approved change usually affects several baselines, not just the budget.
Scope creep vs gold-plating
- Scope creep: uncontrolled additions, usually requested by stakeholders and added without going through change control.
- Gold-plating: extras the team adds on its own that nobody asked for. Even if users might like them, they add cost and risk without approval.
How agile handles change
On agile projects, most changes don't go to a change control board. A new idea goes to the product owner, who adds it to the product backlog and orders it by value. The team doesn't change the work inside the current sprint (or iteration) unless the sprint goal itself has become obsolete. On hybrid projects, you'll often see both: formal change control for contract or regulatory items, and backlog refinement for product features.
A quick example
Midway through a hospital app project, the sponsor asks for video calls with nurses in the first release. The best first step is to raise a change request and analyse the impact, then take it to the decision-makers with options, for example "add it and move the launch by three weeks" or "move it to release two".
Practise it
Read the free Manage and Control Changes chapter and the scope chapter, then take the free PMP chapter test. In PMP Quest, change requests arrive mid-project and you decide what happens next.