How should I respond to increased demands from management? 213 Making Good Change Decisions If the change appears to be mandatory, or it has a credible and compel- ling business justification, prepare to accept it. As with any accepted change, update your project documents and communicate the revi- sions. If the change is major, work with your sponsor in resetting your project baseline. If the change is less than compelling, use your analysis to avoid accepting it. Vividly describe the consequences of the change, empha- sizing any that directly conflict with stated project objectives. Because you are dealing with your management, you'll need to tread softly. One possible approach is to start with, ``Yes, we can implement that change, but that will require these additional changes. . . .'' Especially for changes proposed late in the project, describe what will have to be taken out of the project to compensate for what management proposes to add. Make the impact of the change clear, and recommend that it be rejected. If your most logical arguments are ineffective, propose deferring the change request to be part of a later project or implementing it as a follow-on effort after you have completed your currently defined proj- ect. If all else fails, counterpropose that only some parts of the proposed change be accepted, trimming off the most harmful aspects of the change while retaining some of its benefits. You are always at a disadvantage when debating with people higher up in the organization than you are, and sometimes they will force changes into your project despite your best and most logical arguments to avoid them. When this happens, document the recommendation you made and the reasons for it. Include honest analysis of the impact of the change in your status reporting, and revisit the change decision as part of your post-project retrospective analysis. Use your lessons-learned analysis of questionable management-commanded changes to tighten up your change process and to help you in handling similar situations on future projects.