Change Requests, Problem Reports and New Tasks

CR's (Change Requests), PR's (Problem Reports)and NT's (New Tasks) should be added to the CRPRNT database. This database could be a full featured database, as well as simple as a simple notebook.

• Change Requests are changes to the requirements originating from stakeholders (could be customers but also developers). Changes may cost more.
• Problem Reports are problems caused by incorrect implementation by the developers. The developers should like to quietly repair these.
• New Tasks are new tasks defined during the development. Usually you will find that during the development new issues turn up, like:
  • "We should also do this"
  • "I don't exactly know what this requirement really means"

We are supposed to do only work defined as task, with priority defined and no higher priority tasks on the list. This means that anything we have to find out should be defined as a task, prioritised and put on the Candidates List. In due time it will appear at the top of the list and it will be done in the next cycle. Anything lower on the list (even simple or very small tasks!) is not done, because we should devote our time to the highest priorities first.

Regularly (once every cycle) the CCB (Change Control Board) will check the database. CCB sounds very formal and there are cases where it should be very formal. In other cases two or more people may act rather informally as ad-hoc CCB. The CCB decides what to do with every issue: either reject, postpone, defining it as a new task directly, or first defining an Analysis Task to analyse the impact of the issue and estimating the effort needed. Analysis Tasks are, like every other task time boxed.

All tasks defined by the CCB will enter the same procedure as any other task: They are added to the Candidate Task list, estimated and prioritised, to pop up at the top of the list when their time has come. See picture.