When a PM Compass project is integrated with a schedule, the change request typically involves changing the schedule. When a change request such as adding activities to the schedule, or other changes such as the addition of resource assignments or changes to relationships are made, the source project is not updated until the change request is approved. Instead, changes entered are recorded and applied using the Model Changes view and applied to the live project on the complete step.
When the change is approved, PM Compass updates the current schedule. Only those fields affected by the change request are updated. Thus, if the schedule has changed since the change request was created and the change details entered, those changes are applied to the updated schedule when the change is approved.
For example, assume a change request is for the addition of a new resource assignment on an activity. Since the change request was created, the duration on the activity has increased and a relationship has been added. When the change is approved in the Model Changes view, the entire activity in the change request is not copied to the schedule because that would overwrite the subsequent changes. Instead, only the actual changes that were made are applied. In this example, the resource assignment is added to the activity. The new duration and relationship are not affected.
Using Model Changes to approve a change request has a number of advantages:
You can load multiple changes to see the impact that they have on the project and each other.
You can load multiple schedule projects as part of a master to see the interconnecting impacts.
The changes are modeled in the schedule, so you can see the effect of the change requests on the entire schedule including deliverables or target dates in the schedule.
You can use all of your custom Open Plan views and processes to analyze the data.
The scheduling algorithms that are part of Open Plan are used.
The changes will not be saved to the live schedule until you complete the workflow.
There are several tasks that you need to complete before you can use Model Changes. See Configure Open Plan to Use with Model Changes.
Review the Integration with Other Products topics, in particular, the Open Plan Integration topics.
When you access Model Changes, the List View displays workflows and user assignments. After you open the schedule in Open Plan that is associated with the changes, you can use this view to select change requests to model in Open Plan. The view includes a Workflows grid that displays the workflows and an Assignments grid that displays the current list of assignees. You can also add new workflows in this view.
Click the Form View button on the toolbar to display the form for the selected workflow.
When you are in the Model Changes view and you click Load Changes, PM Compass displays the Modeling Session List View. The List View displays the list of workflows that you selected in the Model Changes List View for modeling in Open Plan. You can select the workflow to which you are making changes in Open Plan, view details of change requests, and approve or submit workflows for review.
If you select a workflow and click Form View, PM Compass automatically makes that workflow active.
Model Changes includes toolbars for the List and Form views.