Change-request impact practice: compare scope, cost and schedule

What you will practise

• Distinguish a request, estimate, approved baseline and actual outcome.
• Calculate additive work and critical dependency effects under stated assumptions.
• Compare bounded alternatives rather than silently expanding scope.
• Prepare an approval-ready recommendation and preserve the old baseline.

The baseline: what was actually agreed

Fictional Larkspur Learning plans to release a workshop booking page. Its approved scope is one booking form, email confirmation and an administrator export. A sponsor now requests calendar synchronization. The request is not approval to change the baseline. The fictional sponsor owns scope and budget decisions; the delivery lead proposes options.

Assume a single engineer works six productive hours per workday on the relevant tasks. Existing baseline work takes 30 hours, followed by 12 hours of testing. Testing depends on the engineer finishing. There are eight workdays left: six hours per day means48 available hours for this sequence. The baseline consumes 42 hours, leaving6 hours of capacity. This simplified model ignores holidays, absences and other work; real plans must account for those constraints.

The requested full calendar feature requires 12 implementation hours plus6 additional testing hours. There is no evidence that a second person can make all work parallel. An estimate describes expected work under assumptions; it is not a guaranteed finish.

Calculate the impact before promising the date

Under the stated serial dependency, adding18 hours to42 gives 60 hours, or10six-hour workdays. Compared with eight available workdays, the full option exceeds capacity by 12 hours: two workdays. A sponsor can approve a revised date, reduce scope, or decline the request. Calling the18 hours a small change does not change the arithmetic.

A phased alternative offers a downloadable calendar file after booking, estimated at 4 implementation hours plus2 testing hours. That adds 6 hours to42 and uses all 48 hours. It may fit the simplified model but leaves no capacity buffer and is not equivalent to two-way synchronization. Record that functional difference prominently.

Do not average away a dependency or count the same engineer’s hours twice. Extra budget alone does not prove additional usable capacity. Adding a second engineer also needs an assessed integration/coordination plan rather than an assumed50% duration reduction.

Compare value and uncertainty

Full synchronization: greatest proposed functionality,60 total hours, revised ten-workday plan under the assumptions. Phased download: narrower functionality,48 hours, eight-workday model with no buffer. Defer the feature: existing42 hours, retains6 hours capacity. None is a universal best choice; the decision depends on value, risk and the sponsor’s constraints.

The requester says synchronization will prevent half of missed workshops. That is a hypothesis without supplied baseline or experiment evidence. Do not attach guaranteed revenue or attendance improvement to the estimate. Propose a later bounded measurement if the feature is approved; this worksheet does not install telemetry.

Suppose internal labor is estimated at $80 per hour. Incremental estimates are18 × 80=$1,440 for full synchronization and6 × 80=$480 for the phased option. These are fictional labor estimates, not supplier quotes, cash commitments or a complete project budget.

Turn analysis into a controlled decision

Your change record should identify the current scope, requested difference, options, assumptions, dependencies, cost/schedule effects, quality criteria, decision owner and communication plan. Preserve the original baseline even if the new option is approved. The resulting decision should name the approved option and any changed constraints.

Before executing, confirm acceptance criteria. A download option could require a valid calendar file with the correct workshop time and a clear statement that later changes do not synchronize automatically. Full synchronization needs more conditions than simply adding a button. Those details affect testing effort and member expectations.

This exercise supports Establish Scope, Build the Plan and Control Change in the course. PMI sources support integrated impact assessment and documented change decisions; this fictional arithmetic, example workflow and approval boundary are original teaching, not an official exam rule or universal organizational policy.

Worked recommendation: preserve the distinction

Recommendation: seek sponsor selection between deferral and the phased download. Preserve the committed eight-workday date only if the sponsor accepts the narrower functionality and zero modeled capacity buffer, or retains the original scope. Do not describe the phased option as full synchronization.

The full feature needs a revised ten-workday serial plan under current estimates, with $1,440 incremental modeled labor. The phased alternative adds $480 and consumes the available six-hour buffer. Benefits remain unverified. Testing estimates and engineer availability must be confirmed before final scheduling.

Decision status: proposed, not approved. Sponsor acknowledgment: not received in this fictional exercise. Next action: present the comparison and acceptance criteria; update the baseline and affected stakeholders only after the appropriate documented decision.

Put it into practice

Current baseline:
Requested change:
Dependency/capacity assumptions:
Options and calculations:
Quality/acceptance criteria:
Unverified benefit:
Recommendation/tradeoffs:
Decision owner and status:
Required communication:
Changed-evidence revision:

Download the practice files

• change-impact-template.txt
• fictional-estimates.csv

Review your reasoning

Try the exercise first, then open these self-review hints. They are guidance, not an assessment result.

Independent learning, clear boundaries

Original independent READY learning. Not official Google or Coursera training, not endorsed by either provider, and not a Google Professional Certificate, READYScore exam, certification or credited course completion. All case data are fictional. Writing is self-reviewed, not automatically graded. This public resource has no account save, submission or reward function.

These exercises use fictional examples. They do not replace production authorization, provider credentials, professional advice or certification requirements.

Official references

• PMI: Scope change control,2008 congress paper

  Documented impact assessment, approval and communication. Fictional thresholds, workflow and estimates are original; this historical article is not asserted as current exam specifications.

• PMI: EVM—a disciplined approach to project management

  Interactions of scope, schedule and cost only; no exercise example or figures drawn from this paper.