How do you document and justify project changes and their outcomes?

Using adaptive management techniques is an excellent way to know whether the project is on track to achieve its goals. Mid-course reviews or after-action reviews can outline what component of the project needs a pilot. Gathering a diverse set of stakeholders and asking a simple set of questions can provide terrific information about what is working compared to what was planned.

Even tracing back from identifying the change it's important to have an objective, broken down into periodic targets. If you have periodic targets to hit on the way to achieving your project's goal, you can figure out if you're on track towards the goal at interim time points. If you aren't, that might be a good sign that change is needed.

Documenting through the project life cycle is one of the pivotal tasks to be able to keep up with project progress and possible changes, and to have a chance to analyse and evaluate the performance afterwards.

To document and justify project changes, start by clearly defining the change, noting its triggers and affected areas. Conduct an impact analysis on scope, budget, and timeline, involving stakeholders to ensure transparency. Seek formal approval, presenting a data-driven summary of benefits, risks, and alignment with project goals. Once approved, document the implementation steps, updating project plans and communicating with the team. Post-implementation, evaluate outcomes versus expected benefits, and capture lessons learned to refine future change management. This keeps changes transparent and aligned with objectives.

An important question to as is whether the project has sufficient resources to pivot and implement a new set of activities or engage a new group of users. How does this pivot track with your theory of change? Will the new activity continue to address the projected outcomes? Maybe you need to consider dropping the activity if the answer to the above questions is 'no.' This will be a brave act - to decide the change is not worth making, and the activity not worth pursuing.

It's pertinent that Project leads and teams invest time in completing and maintaining their Risk registers. This register evolves over the course of the project and can pre-empt mitigation and management strategies to handle project change management. Giving your stakeholders additional confidence and showing possible risks and impacts. Stakeholders can then have an early warning and analyse the impact.

Ensuring the stakeholders continue to embrace the project, with the proposed change is key! Be sure to document the decision points for making the change. What are the new opportunities created by making the change? Be sure to document and communicate these - without leaving anyone out of your communication plan.

Peer Assists (https://kmtraining.org/course/peer-assist/) create a facilitated learning space where one team shares new knowledge, and the other team learns from the first team. The detailed microplanning described above is something that could be coached through a peer assist, particularly if there is one team that has tested the proposed change. For example, given this article is an AI-generated article, I needed to get some coaching about how to do it. LinkedIn provides a video on how to contribute to these crowd-sourced, AI-driven articles. The relationship that gets established during the Peer Assist could be maintained as a source of technical assistance as the change to the activities is implemented.

The evaluation of the change should be discussed right from the start! In fact, the identification of monitoring and evaluation indicators will help guide the feasibility of the change being proposed. If you can't measure the effects of the change, that needs to be clear to the stakeholders. Perhaps, there is another partner who could monitor the effects of the change. There are exciting ways to measure the effects of the project or the new pivot in the project. A great method is the Most Significant Change method, where personal accounts of the change are collected, analyzed, and reviewed for significance in light of the anticipated change.

Revisar el Cambio: Antes de implementar cambios, analizo su viabilidad y alineación con los objetivos del proyecto. Evalúo impactos potenciales en recursos, plazos y calidad. A?adir Experiencia Personal: Incorporo mi experiencia para contextualizar la justificación del cambio, destacando lecciones aprendidas y evidenciando cómo la modificación mejora el proceso o resultados previstos.

Documenting and justifying project changes involves thorough documentation of change requests, impact assessments, and stakeholder communication. In subsea wind projects, changes in equipment specifications should be recorded with updated risk assessments. Grid code compliance studies require detailed logs of regulatory updates and their effects on project design. In manufacturing, changes to production processes must be justified through cost-benefit analyses. Similarly, alterations to battery energy storage systems should be documented with performance metrics and financial implications. Transparency and accountability ensure project changes align with objectives and deliver desired outcomes.

To document and justify changes in a project, I maintain a detailed change log, conduct impact analysis, communicate with stakeholders, update relevant documentation, and ensure review and approval. This process ensures transparency and alignment with project objectives.