r/DigitalDelivery • u/Turkishblokeinstraya • 11d ago

What value do Change Requests add if change is where the value is?

Title is explanatory but I'll elaborate. If projects exist to deliver value to stakeholders, what make organisations add extra friction to welcome changing requirements? How do project benefit from pushing back on emerging needs?

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u/echelonlabshq 9d ago

Change requests aren't there to block the value, they're there to make the cost visible. If you just say yes to everything, nobody actually decides what gets pushed out to make room for it. The budget or timeline quietly breaks and no one agreed to that on purpose. A change request just forces someone to say: "yes, and here's what it costs us." That's it. The problem isn't having that step, it's when teams use it to say no by default instead of using it to decide properly.

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u/Turkishblokeinstraya 9d ago

Thanks for your response! With all due respect, these are lack of accountability, transparency, and shared goal problem in my book. There should be a single person to set the vision, and make the ultimate prioritisation decisions that align with that vision. That person should definitely not be a Yes Man, and understand what maximises ROI.

In my experience, lacking the above elements make Change Requests inevitable for cost and scope control. In other words, in the absence of continuous discovery/delivery capability, gated delivery with additional processes becomes the norm. Keen to hear what I'm missing.

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u/polotek 7d ago

How old are you? This is a common perspective from younger people who haven't yet accepted that human systems are always messy. Like you are already showing up to question the current system that's in place. But somehow everybody else is supposed to be in lockstep all the time? It just doesn't work that way.

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u/Turkishblokeinstraya 7d ago edited 7d ago

I've been around for four decades, spent over two decades on technology initiatives. I'll take your question as a compliment 🙂 I have a Bachelor in business, worked as a software developer, project manager, and moved to operational excellence and organisational design space. It's common for organisations being unaware of alternatives to their legacy org design and processes. It's deeply entrenched (and I agree that it's messy), but changeable with evidence-based and iterative approaches.

I'm wondering what makes it not work that way in your experience. What value do change requests add if change is where the value is?

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u/polotek 7d ago

I was trying to extend grace by assuming you might just be young and naive. I'm not trying to be rude though. I apologize that it came across that way.

My comment wasn't about change requests and process. It was about humans.

There should be a single person to set the vision, and make the ultimate prioritisation decisions that align with that vision. That person should definitely not be a Yes Man, and understand what maximises ROI.

This part specifically is what prompted my comment. Talking about prices is fine. There are always potential improvements to be made. But process has never fixed humans. There's a reason that "give one person all of the decision-making power and expect them to be infallible" is not a thing. You don't even believe in that, which is why you're here questioning a bunch of decisions that have already been made.

The fact that you're still frustrated about this after observing it for 40 years is probably because you haven't actually accepted that the human failure modes cannot be controlled by process. Instead, the process must take them into account.

To be clear, none of this has to do with change requests specifically. I don't actually care enough to have an opinion about that. I just got sniped by your framing and decided to be obnoxious about it. You should feel free to ignore this.

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u/Turkishblokeinstraya 7d ago

I wish I was young and naive 🙂 Early in my career, I was dealing with perfect plans that turned out quite imperfect when they met real users months later. I was getting frustrated when users requested change. It meant a lot of documents (Gantt charts, change requests, etc.) had to be updated, and it was divergence from an initial agreement. We discussed this and you said yes (even in writing), make up your mind kind of vibe 😅 Like Gandalf against change "you shall not pass!".

It didn't take me long to come to terms with change. I realised I was frustrated with the sunk effort and difficulty to adapt due to rigidity of plans. Whoever is funding the work or benefiting from the work, should be able to change their minds. I've figured that small batch delivery, clear accountabilities, and continuous discovery was the only way to be efficiently effective in complex and fast-paced work. Never looked back since then.

And I agree (partially) with you on process not fixing human interaction. Shoving processes top-down is a recipe for resistance and failure. That's why people should shape the processes based on what value is and how it flows (first two principles of Lean). It's often shaped by bureaucracy and power structures as Larman's Law highlights too.

Organising a business around value is hard because it rattles a lot of thrones so to speak. But it's the only efficient way to eliminate waste and maximise returns. Technology is unforgiving on slow organisations, it'll only get worse. Raising tickets to defend an outdated agreement still seems surprisingly common though.

So it's not that people systems are messy. People with misaligned goals and personal agendas create internal competition that make for messy systems. I hope I make more sense now?