Project change request: a proposal for managing change in industrialization projects

Abstract

Most often, industrialization projects, such as New Product Development (NPD) projects, do not have the full scope of work well known beforehand; the degree of uncertainty is high. In this context, the development of the Project Management Plan (PMP) is postponed to later stages of the project, when the scope becomes better understood, having great consequences on the planning of activities and on the way work is performed. In order to overcome this problem, the common concept of Change Request is separated in the existent Engineering Change Request (technical) and the Project Change Request (management). The Project Change Request (PCR) is presented as a solution not only to allow the PMP to be defined earlier, according to Project Management (PM) good practices, but also to manage changes on project documents as the project evolves. The implementation of PCRs is expected to bring value to NPD practitioners when integrating NPD to PM practice.