As part of project integration management knowledge area and processes tutorial we have see that the process have 7 processes as listed below and Perform integrated change control is one of the processes.

• Develop project charter
• Develop project management plan
• Direct and manage project work
• Manage project knowledge
• Monitor and control project work
• Perform integrated change control
• Close project or phase

In this tutorial we will look deeper in to integrated change management, the importance of integrated change control and what are the main objectives of integrated change control?. Before we start lets understand what is change management.

What is Change Management?

What is a change ? A change is an act or process through which something becomes different, in IT terminology any change in infrastructure, software, processes, etc . Change is inevitable and companies, projects, programs undergo changes.

Change management is the system approach in dealing the changes using the tools and techniques for efficient and prompt handing of change requests in the IT infrastructure. This is the minimize the impact of the change on organizational goals, deliverable, service.Change management can ensure standardized methods, processes and procedures which are used for all changes, facilitate efficient and prompt handling of all changes, and maintain the proper balance between the need for change and the potential detrimental impact of changes.

What is Integrated Change Management?

Integrated Change Management is to achieve the desired target state by integration of the organizational and individual change processes. What is integrated change control? Perform Integrated Change Control is the processes in Project integration knowledge area and it is the is the process of reviewing all change requests, approving changes and managing changes to deliverable s, organizational process assets, project documents,  project management plan and communicating the decisions to stakeholders. Project change management process reviews all change requests , evaluate the risks associated and determines the resolution of the change request.

Perform integrated change management is conducted from start of the project and Project Manager is complete responsible for it. Change requests can impact the scope, project management plan, project documents etc. Changes are required to formally controlled after the baselines are defined.

Change Control vs Change Management?

We cannot differentiate much on change management and change control. We could say Change Control is a subset of the Change Management process. As per ITIL Change Management aims to control the lifecycle of all Changes. Refer the below figure for understanding process overview of ITIL Change Management .

Change control is an important and it effectively emphasize assessing the business impact and ramifications of a change and the communication and coordination activities involved in evaluating, approving and implementing a change.Change control is all about critically evaluating each suggested change to ensure that it is the right thing to do.

Any proposed change must be approved in the change management process. While change management makes the process happen, the decision authority is the Change Advisory Board (CAB), which generally is composed of people from other functions within the organization. The main activities of the change management are:

• Create Change Requests
• Managing changes and the change process
• Approval from CAB and the CAB/Emergency committee
• Reviewing and closing of Requests for Change (RFCs) post implementation.
• Reporting and communicating information to stakeholders.

Perform Integrated Change Control Inputs:

Change requests and Project management plan is one of the major inputs for this process. Below are the inputs listed.

a)Project Management Plan. The sub documents in PP are

• Change management plan
• Configuration management plan
• Scope baseline
• Schedule baseline
• Cost baseline

b) Change Requests - Change requests can be updates, changes to deliverable, corrective actions, preventive action, defect repairs, new scope etc.

c)Project Documents - like estimates, traceability matrix. risk report etc.

d)Work performance reports - this include schedule, cost data, earned value reports etc. 

Perform Integrated Change Control Outputs:

The main output of this process is approved change requests. The change requests are approved by CCB or change control board. Below are the outputs listed.

• Approved Change Requests
• Project Management Plan Updates
• Project Document Updates.

This tutorial gives you what examples are inputs to the perform integrated change control process and respective outputs of the process. Also you should be able to relate your change process in your company to standard process.