Change Control Approach

Here you can find a simple Change Control Approach template in Microsoft Word/Excel format, along with explanation on how to use it.

Download the Template

Background

Do you know what PRINCE2 means by “issue”?

There are three types of issues in PRINCE2:

Request for change
Off-specification
Problem/concern

In other words, “change management” is a form of “issue management” in PRINCE2. However, the name of the management approach document is Change Control Approach, and not Issue Control Approach, probably because change management is a big concern in projects.

So, anyway, this document is about the way we manage all three types of issues, including changes. How would you do that?

The answer is outside the scope of this guide and template. PRINCE2 gives you some guidance on how to do that, and yet, for a more advanced approach, you may want to use resources that are specifically about issue and change management. After that, you’d be ready to document your approach here, and explain the process, as well as related documents such as Issue Log (the columns in the log, and scales, etc.)

One important thing to remember is that you don’t have to prepare the management approaches from scratch for each project. A simple version is usually prepared in the organization level (e.g. in a PMO), and then you just tailor it for your project.

Composition

The template has 3 main sections:

Document information : this is the generic information about the document and connections with your Configuration Management system. Feel free to add more information here, but it’s best to keep it simple.
Approval: this section is for capturing approvals. There are multiple lines, because you may have multiple versions of this document approved. If you have a well-formed Configuration Management system to track approvals, feel free to remove this section.
The Approach: This is where you explain how you’re going to manage the issues.

eLearning Courses

If you’d like to learn everything about PRINCE2, I can suggest our eLearning courses:

The first few lessons in each course are free. You can start taking the courses right now and make sure it’s what you’ve been looking for before you buy.

Note: The first 30% of the courses used to be free, but because of the recent constraints from PeopleCert, we’re not allowed to offer more than 15% of the scope or more than 90 minutes of the duration for free.