PRINCE2 Themes – Change

The purpose of the Change theme is to identify, assess and control any potential and approved changes to the baseline.

Change is inevitable during the life of a project, and every project needs a systematic approach to the identification, assessment and control of issues that may result in change.

As changes may arise from project team members, stakeholder requests, complaints or a wide range of other factors, PRINCE2 provides a common approach to issue and change control.

Issue and change control is a continual activity, performed throughout the life of the project.

The aim of issue and change control procedures is not to prevent changes; it is to ensure that every change is agreed by the relevant authority before it takes place.

Configuration Management

The starting point for all projects will be to identify whether there are any corporate or programme policies and processes that need to be applied, and incorporate them into the project’s own Configuration Management Strategy. The project’s Configuration Management Strategy should define:

• The configuration management procedure (e.g. planning, identification, control, status accounting, verification and audit)
• The issue and change control procedure (e.g. capturing, examining, proposing, decision making, implementing)
• The tools and techniques that will be used
• The records that will be kept
• How the performances of the procedures will be reported
• Timing of configuration management and issue and change control activities
• The roles and responsibilities for configuration management and issue and change control activities (including whether any corporate or programme management roles are to be involved).