Before you report
Change Log Analyzer
Turn a change log into the numbers a steering group needs: how much approved change has added to the baseline, what is still waiting and for how long, and where it all comes from.
Read a change log or change request register as .xlsx or .csv inside your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
Change log
Drop a spreadsheet here
One row per change request, with a status. Cost and schedule impact, dates raised and decided, and a source if you keep them.
Scope growth as a number
Every change request is reasonable on its own; together they are the reason the budget moved. The tool adds up the cost of every approved change, nets off the ones that took scope out, and sets the total against the baseline budget, so “we have taken on a lot of change” becomes “approved change has added 19.6 percent.” It does the same for what is waiting: the growth you would have if every pending request were approved as asked.
What is waiting, and for how long
A change waiting for a decision is work that cannot be planned. The tool lists every pending request by how long it has waited, and measures how long decisions take when they are made. It also finds the same change asked for twice, which would otherwise be counted twice.
Statuses that do not say
“Approved” and “Rejected” are clear. “Closed” and “Done” are not: a closed request may have been approved and delivered, or turned down. Rather than guess, the tool leaves those out of the totals and asks you to set each one, and every figure on the page follows your choice.
Where change comes from
Requests by source, with how many were approved and what they cost. When one source accounts for most of the approved cost, that is worth a conversation about how requirements were gathered, or about how the contract handles change.
What this does not do
It does not judge whether a change was worth making; benefit and risk are the decision of the people who approve. Schedule impact is the sum of the days recorded, which overstates the effect on the finish date when changes sit on parallel paths; the Critical Path Calculator shows what a change does to the finish.