Log closed January 31, 2025 — after the final change request was dispositioned and before program closeout. 12 change requests were raised across the program. This log is the reconciliation between the post-close cost baseline and the actual outturn: the approved requests bridge the two exactly, and every figure on this page is computed from that bridge rather than reported independently.
Contents
1. The complete log
| Ref | Request | Disposition | Cost | Schedule | Constraint protected | Constraint spent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CR-001 | Extend integration layer to cover 270/271 real-time eligibility | Approved | $780,000 | — | Day 1 integrity | Cost |
| CR-002 | Add second data-steward cohort for the clerical review band | Approved | $1,240,000 | — | Data integrity | Cost |
| CR-003 | Add 12 offshore data stewards to work down the review queue | Rejected | — | — | — | — |
| CR-004 | TSA extension, three months, core admin and IT services | Approved | $3,450,000 | 13 wk | Data integrity | Schedule margin and cost |
| CR-005 | Extend IMO and workstream leads through revised TSA exit | Approved | $1,260,000 | 13 wk | Data integrity | Cost |
| CR-006 | Refactor claims adjudication rules engine during migration | Rejected | — | — | TSA exit date | — |
| CR-007 | Provider network rationalization phase 2 | Deferred | — | — | Schedule and cost | Scope |
| CR-008 | Care management advanced analytics module | Deferred | — | — | Schedule and cost | Scope |
| CR-009 | Migrate claims history beyond 7 years | Approved with modification | — | — | TSA exit date | Scope (depth of history) |
| CR-010 | Accelerate member ID card reissue ahead of Day 1 | Approved | $410,000 | — | Day 1 integrity | Cost |
| CR-011 | Second Azure landing zone for the retained mainframe facade | Approved | $460,000 | — | Day 1 integrity | Cost |
| CR-012 | Retention bonus pool extension for Cumberland Valley key talent | Withdrawn | — | — | — | — |
| Approved change — 6 requests | $7,600,000 | 13 wk | ||||
Every row names what it protects and what it spends, and that is what makes this log auditable against the charter rather than merely complete. The charter ranks the program's constraints: the contractual maximum on transitional services and Day 1 integrity are hard, synergy is firm, cost flexes, and scope flexes first. A change request that protects a hard constraint by spending a flexible one is the ranking working. One that protects cost by spending data integrity would be the ranking inverted — and a log without these two columns cannot show the difference.
2. Reconciliation to the cost baseline
| Line | Amount | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Post-close base estimate | $51,800,000 | Class 2, set at re-baseline |
| Contingency at 8% | $4,144,000 | Held inside the baseline against identified risk |
| Cost baseline | $55,944,000 | The figure change control governs |
| Management reserve | $4,200,000 | Outside the baseline; released by the sponsor |
| Authorized funding | $60,144,000 | Baseline plus reserve |
| Bridge | ||
| Approved change requests (6) | $7,600,000 | Sum of the approved column above |
| Absorbed by contingency | −$4,144,000 | Contingency fully consumed |
| Drawn from management reserve | $3,456,000 | Sponsor decision, not a program one |
| Actual outturn | $59,400,000 | Cost baseline plus the reserve draw |
| Variance against cost baseline | +$3,456,000 | Over the baseline |
| Variance against authorized funding | −$744,000 | Inside authorization |
| Management reserve remaining | $744,000 | Returned unspent |
The two variance lines say opposite things and both are true, which is exactly why a program must state which baseline it is reporting against. Measured against the cost baseline the program is over by $3,456,000. Measured against authorized funding it came in under by $744,000. Neither figure is spin: the baseline is what change control governs, and the reserve is what the sponsor holds for the things a baseline cannot anticipate. A program that reports only the first looks like it failed; one that reports only the second looks like nothing happened. The reserve was drawn, it was drawn by the person authorized to draw it, and it was not exhausted — $744,000 went back. That is the whole story and it takes both lines to tell it.
3. Which constraint each request spent
Read the last two columns of the log together and a pattern appears that the dispositions alone do not show. Every approved request spent cost, schedule margin or scope. None spent data integrity or Day 1 integrity, and the two requests that would have — offshore stewards and higher throughput — are the two that were refused.
A change control log is where a charter's constraint order is either honored or quietly abandoned, and the abandonment never announces itself. Under pressure, the cheapest-looking option is usually the one that spends a constraint nobody is measuring — quality, data integrity, a capability with no owner. Those spends do not appear as variance. They appear later, in somebody else's operating year, in a form that cannot be traced back to the meeting that caused them. The columns exist so that a decision to spend an unmeasured constraint would have to be written down as such at the moment it was taken.
4. The rejections, and why they matter more than the approvals
Two requests were rejected and one was approved only with modification. They carry more information about how the program was governed than the six approvals do, because an approval records what a program was willing to fund and a rejection records what it was not willing to trade.
- CR-003, offshore stewards — refused because member-level data cannot be worked offshore under the state contract. It was re-raised in compliant form as CR-002 and approved onshore at higher cost. The constraint was not negotiable, so the response was to pay more rather than to seek an exception.
- CR-006, refactor the claims rules engine during migration — refused because a refactor under a transitional services clock is where first-time cloud programs die. Rehost to hit the exit date; optimize afterward, when the meter has stopped.
- CR-009, claims history depth — approved with modification rather than in full. Seven years live plus a cold archive, because the egress arithmetic for the full history did not fit the migration window. It carried no net cost and removed four weeks.
CR-012 was withdrawn, and a withdrawal is worth logging rather than deleting. A retention bonus pool extension was raised and then withdrawn by the originator once attrition came in below the trigger threshold. Nothing was decided and nothing was spent. Keeping the row shows a control process that was used to test a question rather than only to ratify decisions already made — and a log containing only approvals and refusals is usually a log that was written after the fact.
5. The deferrals — what was actually cut
Two requests were deferred to a Year 2 backlog, together representing $1,900,000 of value moved out of the program. Each carries a named owner who accepted the deferral: CR-007 — J. Kirkendall, VP Network Management · CR-008 — Dr. M. Ellsworth, Chief Medical Officer.
The value stays visible in synergy reporting rather than being removed from the denominator. Removing it would raise every remaining percentage and make the program look better for having delivered less.
Scope is the constraint the charter allows to flex first, and it is the one most programs leave untouched while cost and schedule absorb everything. A program that returns to its sponsor asking only for money and time has not tested its own priorities. But a deferral with no named owner is not a deferral — it is an abandonment that will be rediscovered by whoever was expecting the capability. These two are the honest test of that: the program closed, the backlog transferred to an organization that did not make the original commitment, and whether the value is ever retrieved depends entirely on whether those two names still hold it.
6. Schedule impact
Approved change added 13 weeks to the transitional services term. Two requests carry that impact — the extension itself and the program leadership required to run alongside it — and they cover the same weeks rather than consecutive ones.
The extension consumed negotiated margin between the exit plan and the contractual maximum. It did not breach the maximum, and margin remained at exit. Blowing a contractual maximum is a governance failure; spending a buffer that was deliberately negotiated at signing is the buffer doing its job.
Related artifacts: 43 — Steering Committee Deck · 12 — Program Budget · 41 — Synergy Realization Tracker · 1 — Integration Charter