Change request
A change request is a written document that asks for an adjustment to a software project's agreed scope, raised by either side once work is under way, and it has to be classified, sized and approved by a named person before anyone builds against it.
Submit a project Control your change requestsReviewed by David Nguyen (CEO) · Updated 14 Oct 2026 · 3 min read
This term is one of the entries in the OutsourcingVN glossary of words buyers meet while a project is in delivery.
Why does a change request matter?
Change is routine on a software project: users see a working screen and ask for something different, or a rule changes outside the project entirely. OutsourcingVN is operated by Netbase JSC, and what separates a healthy project from a drifting one is not whether change requests arrive, but whether each one is written down, estimated and decided before any code moves, rather than agreed in a chat message and discovered at invoice time.
What is an example of a change request in practice?
A training company's booking project is three weeks into a milestone when the finance lead asks for the emailed invoice to be replaced with a receipt sent straight to the booking confirmation screen. The project manager logs it as change request CR-013, notes that the two formats are similar in size and effort, and the product owner approves it the same day as a swap, with no change to budget or schedule. Because it went through the log, nobody argues at acceptance about whether the receipt was already included.
What are the common misreadings of a change request?
A change request is not automatically a sign the project is going badly — a request raised, logged and decided in a day is change control working as intended, not a failure. It is also not the same thing as a defect report: a defect means the agreed criteria were not met and is fixed inside the existing scope, while a change request asks for something the agreed criteria never covered. And logging a request does not mean building it; many change requests are deferred to a later phase or declined, and the log exists precisely so that decision is visible and deliberate rather than silent.
Plan the next step for your project
Common questions
Either side. A developer who gets an informal ask from a stakeholder should log it as a request rather than building it on the strength of the conversation.
No. A request that turns out to be a clarification of existing scope, or a swap of similar size, often carries no extra cost; only new scope, classified as an addition, typically needs fresh budget.
Which decisions does a change request affect?
Classifying each request, logging its impact and applying agreed decision rules so a yes or no takes days, not weeks, is the subject of the software change control guide. When a request has come in on a live project and you need it sized and decided, describe it and Netbase will respond through Netbase's own outsourcing-services platform; submit a project when you are ready.