1. PROJECT SCOPE, RESOURCES, AUTHORITY, AND CHANGE 1
Project Management Scope, Resources, Manager Authority, and Change Requests
Loren Karl Schwappach
Project Management Processes in Organizations, Colorado Technical University

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Abstract
This paper is a discussion about project change approval and change management request
systems. It covers who approves changes in a projects scope, resources, and overall change
control and explains a process management technique for controlling project changes.

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Project Management Scope, Resources, Manager Authority, and Change Requests
The majority of most projects will never be completed without various changes affecting
the projects initially designed plan (Kerzner, 2003). Changes often occur and can affect the
projects resource predictions and allocations and even drastically change the direction of the
project through project scope changes. Since most changes rarely involve increased project
resources and decreased project requirements formalized project change procedures and change
approval authorities are critical to a projects success. According to Kerzner (2003), it was
common place for Department of Defense contracts to underbid the original contract during the
bidding phase to ensure awarding of a contract and then push forward a large amount of project
scope changes to increase contractual requirements (later determined critical for the project) and
thus enact increased contract profits. Although there are often valid reasoning for performing
changes to a projects scope, resources, and deliverables, changes in scope should be avoided if
they result in excessive scope change, noncompetitive final costs, immensely delayed investment
return, unworthy risks, insurmountable obstacles and complexity, legal or regulatory uncertainty,
and or violations to a company’s policies, nondisclosure agreements, secrecy, and confidentiality
(Kerzner, 2003) Many organizations believe that the project manager should not have complete
control over a project due to invested interest. Kerzner (2003) and the PMBOK guide (A Guide
to, 2008) disagree stating that although the project manager reports on progress changes to upper
level project stake holders the project manager should be fully empowered and have final
authority on project change management and incorporate a Change Control Board made up of
organizational leadership to aid the project manager in change approval (thus ensuring invested
project interests do not supersede organizational interests). I’m not sure how I would see this

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issue. As the project manager I would favor the PMBOK suggestion as an organizational leader
I’d be reluctant to hand over such far reaching control and thus the balancing act game is played.
Project Scope
The Project Management Body of Knowledge PMBOK guide (A Guide to, 2008) defines
the project scope to be contained within the planning process group. The projects scope is
defined after a project management plan is created and project requirements are collected. The
project scope contains a detailed description of the project and product. The scope requires the
inputs of a project charter, requirements document, and process assets. The project scope leads
process leads to the outputs of a project scope statement and project document updates.
According to the PMBOK (A Guide to, 2008) the project sponsor (project champion and
financial approving authority) plays a significant role with the project manager an various
stakeholders in determining the projects scope and ensuring that the scope matches
organizational interests. The project sponsor also acts as the initial approval authority for the
projects scope. Project change requests may be requested by any project stakeholder. Changes
in a projects scope must be approved or rejected by an authority within the project management
team with the project manager having ultimate authority. Changes in project scope can have
devastating consequences to a project and should be deeply considered and managed before
action is applied. The project manager is given full authority for project scope changes because
as project manager he / she is ultimately responsible for the success / failure of the project and
should be in constant good communication with organizational leadership and all project
stakeholders. Project change control is covered in section 4.5 of the PMBOK, section 5.5
specifically addresses how to control the projects scope (A Guide to, 2008).
Project Resources

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According to the PMBOK (A Guide to, 2008) the project manager uses activity lists,
attributes, calendars, environmental factors, and organizational process assets to develop activity
resource requirements, resource breakdown structures and project update requirements. The
project manager is hopefully assigned as the project resource change approval authority (in most
successful projects where the project manager has the full authority he / she needs) looking from
the project manager’s perspective. However, in most projects organizational executive
leadership either retains this authority or delegates the authority to organizational line managers.
This can create increased complexity in the project manager’s job to control project dynamics
and changes. Project Change Management Systems provide particular benefits for managing
changes within a project.
Project Manager Change Authority
As stated in the previous project scope and resource sections of this post the project
manager should be the ultimate change authority for the project. However project changes are
often approved or denied by the project management team and or other high level organizational
leadership. Most projects also include a Change Control Board with members such as the project
manager, key executives, and high organizational stakeholders (like the project sponsor) that
formally approve or deny change requests.
Change Management Request System (CMRS)
The PMBOK (A Guide to, 2008) has a thoroughly developed set of processes for
performing, approving, and managing project change requests. Section 4.5 of the PMBOK (A
Guide to, 2008) specifically covers project change control. Change control involves activities
such as influencing factors that could circumvent proper change control, reviewing, analyzing,
and approving change request, managing approved changes, releasing only approved changes for

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incorporation, reviewing, approving, or denying actions, coordinating change actions, and
documenting the change process. A formal change management system usually involves well
documented change purpose reasoning, actions, activities, request number, and stakeholder
approval authorities (hopefully with final authority given to the project manager, however in the
real world other factors may place this authority in the hands of a parallel or higher
organizational level). Change requests should always be recorded in written form and entered
into the change management system with estimations about the time, costs, and performance
impacts. As previously mentioned the project Change Control Board (CCB) usually acts as the
approval authority for most projects (the project manager is the head of this board in our project
oriented dream world). Approved project changes usually require revised cost estimates, activity
sequences, schedule dates, resource requirements, and risk response alternatives (A Guide to,
2008). A good configuration management system (and one I would utilize) would require
change/configuration identification, be available to incorporate status reporting, and auditing for
after action analysis. An amazing change management system would have superior efficiency,
clear concise levels of reporting and managing changes, timely, and involve all necessary
stakeholders that might have impact on a project. While scouring the internet I found one good
site that balances change approval authority and lists seven steps required for creating a stress
free project change management process (A Total Project, n.d.). First the project manger
receives a formal request for a project change (using a change request form). The project
manager updates a project change log with the new request. The project manager looks at the
projects scope, budget, schedule, performance, and resources and evaluates the impact of the
change. For CCB determined minor impacts the project manager has complete authority to
approve / deny the change. For CCB determined major impacts the change is brought before the

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CCB. If there is a financial consideration to the change the project manager may be required to
receive project sponsor authorization (level preset by the sponsor and CCB). Finally the change
is approved (log updated, project team informed to start changes, plans and schedules are
updated, parties informed) or the change is refused (log updated and parties informed).
Reasoning for CMRS technique
Needless to say there is no perfect Change Management Request System (CMRS);
however the more thought and detail spent monitoring change activities, risk, budget, time,
scheduling, and resource reevaluations, and detailing the importance and purpose of the changes
will have increasingly positive impacts on a projects success. There are many CMRS plans and
forms widely available on the internet. I looked at several of them while working on this post
over the last couple of days and the ones that seem to be to most advantageous to me from the
view point of a project manager include numerous levels of detail and complexity. As a project
manager I would seek as much detail as possible, so long as the details were clear concise, and
useful for managing changes. However, there is often the problem of getting useless information
that delays a project manager’s efficiency.

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References
A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (4th ed.). (2008). Newtown Square, PA:
Project Management Institute, Inc.
A Total Project Change Management Process with no Stress (n.d.). In Product-ivity. Retrieved
August 6, 2011, from http://product-ivity.com/project-change-management/
Kerzner, H. (2003) Project management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and
controlling (8th ed.). Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.