Dealing with Change
"We should put our foot down. We should say that we will only do business with clients who don't change their requirements. We will work with subject matter experts who say what they mean and mean what they say. We will insist that client personnel guarantee they will stay with the project until the end. And we will not, under any conditions, accept any surprises."
Dream on! In the real world, change occurs, and occurs often. As consultants, it is our job to satisfy our clients' needs while managing the budget, timeline, and resources we've been given. When clients change their requirements in midstream, it can result in "Scope Creep", that pesky tendency that projects have of creeping outside the initially established project scope. Scope creep can be one of the most difficult things consultants must deal with - it can wreck the project schedule, the budget, and your ability to deliver quality, all at the same time. We need to make every effort to uncover all of the requirements up front, and establish procedures for managing change requests.
But what happens when the change is truly needed?
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