The Cost of Unstructured Business Requests in Project Management

Project managers often receive requests such as: "Can we add one more feature?" or "Can you make this report better?" Failing to provide a team-specific requirement with context can lead to "small" job requests becoming "expensive" change requests.

A project manager should outline the need, desired outcome, timeframe, and parameters of a business request. Using a simple request form allows employees to submit all of these details in one place so project managers can review them and ask pertinent questions in the early stages of the project.

How Unstructured Requests Drive Costs

A designer can create the wrong screen, a developer can work with inaccurate data, or a team can produce a report that doesn't address the actual question. As the deadline approaches, correcting the work will require additional effort.

Unstructured requests also enter a project informally through chats, meetings, and hallway conversations. When more than one person provides contradictory instructions, a project manager has to spend more time managing up than delivering the project.

Hidden Costs Go Beyond Money

Direct costs include additional labour, retesting, and tools or materials that the team has not budgeted for. There are also less obvious costs, such as decisions made or delayed that disrupt focus or consume time that could be devoted to more important matters. According to the Project Management Institute, scope creep and inadequate requirements management are both project management issues that lead to uncontrolled scope growth.

Unstructured requests can also undermine trust. As changes continue over time, users may lose faith in the estimates and confidence in the delivery date.

Warning Signs a Request Needs Structure

These clues can help to determine if a request needs structure:

• The requester isn't able to describe the issue or explain the need for the change.

• There is a fixed deadline, but the required effort and priority are unknown.

• Different stakeholders describe the expected outcome differently.

A Practical Way to Control Request Costs

Gather each request in a common location, then discuss the following: What is the business problem? What outcome is expected? When is it due? Who will be affected? Next, determine its priority, required effort, risks, resource needs, and impact on the approved scope of work. A Project Management Institute study of requirements management has shown that good requirements processes are correlated with better alignment and stronger delivery performance.

Then assign a specific decision maker to approve, defer, revise, or reject each request. If proposed revisions are accepted, update the schedule, budget, and scope as necessary, and inform affected stakeholders of the changes.

Individual business requests may appear minor, but their cumulative cost can be substantial. They cause needless rework, delay delivery, undermine trust, and obscure the actual demands on a team's time. A structured approach helps the project team remain focused and align its work with actual business needs.