The Change Requests Nobody Counted
You are delivering a fixed-price website rebuild: six months, EUR 480k, 12 monthly deliverables. The client's marketing director has bypassed your change board twice this month by emailing developers directly with 'small' additions; her team has raised 43 change requests so far, of which 12 went through the process. Baseline effort for delivered work was 120 person-days; actual is 138. At the steering group the client sponsor said: 'Don't worry about the commercial side, we'll sort it out at the end.' Your own management wants the project reported as on track because the relationship is good. Month 4 starts Monday.
1. How do you deal with the marketing director's direct emails this week?
Read the worked answer
Contain, don't confront.
She is not being malicious - she is being fast, and the current process rewards her for it. Two things to fix: the behaviour and the reason for the behaviour.
- Have a 30-minute conversation, not send a policy email. Open with the practical consequence to her: work done outside the process is unestimated, unplanned and outside the fixed price, so it will either not be delivered or it will push out the date - and she will be the one explaining the slippage to her own board.
- Offer speed in exchange for a single channel. A named contact on my side, a two-working-day triage commitment on every request, and a simple form that takes her team five minutes. If her fastest route becomes the official one, the bypass loses its purpose.
- Log the 43 requests with dates, originators and outcomes before the conversation. Not as ammunition - so the conversation is about evidence rather than impressions.
I would not escalate to her sponsor as a first move; that converts a fixable process gap into a governance fight in month 4.
2. 'We'll sort out the commercial side at the end.' How do you respond to the sponsor?
Read the worked answer
Treat it as risk being transferred to you personally, and quantify it now.
"At the end" means the argument happens when the leverage has gone: the work is done, the budget is spent, and the only remaining question is whether you absorb it.
Prepare a one-page position for the next steering group:
- Changes raised, approved and in progress, with person-day estimates.
- 18 person-days already over baseline - roughly 15%, before any of the 31 unprocessed requests are counted.
- The trend: 43 requests in four months is about 2.7 per week and rising, so the month-6 date is at risk on current trajectory.
- A decision requested, not a complaint: either approve a contract variation for the change volume, or agree a descoping of equal effort from the original scope so the date holds.
Then get it minuted. If the sponsor genuinely chooses to absorb it commercially at the end, that is his risk appetite and he is entitled to it - but it must be his recorded decision, not a verbal reassurance that later becomes your unexplained overrun.
3. What do you report, and how do you report it, given your own management wants 'on track'?
Read the worked answer
Report actuals, forecast and change exposure separately - never netted off.
- Delivery: on plan against baseline scope, with the caveat stated.
- Change exposure: 43 raised, 12 approved, 18 person-days over baseline, date risk flagged with the number.
- Commercial: unapproved change volume, pending variation.
- Trend line: requests per week. This is the leading indicator that turns this from a month-6 surprise into a month-4 decision.
On the pressure: a status colour is a claim about the future, not a courtesy. Reporting "green" when the forecast says otherwise means the eventual slippage lands on me as a concealment rather than a shared problem. I would say plainly: I can report green on scope-as-baselined and red on change exposure; what I can't do is report a single green and mean it.
If I am overruled, I record my assessed position in the minutes and move on. The record is not defiance; it is the minimum professional standard.