What is a change request?

A change request is a formal ask to add, remove or modify agreed work after a quote, scope or contract has been signed off, priced and approved before the change starts, not after.

What it means in practice

Once a scope of work is agreed, new asks need their own process, or they turn into unpaid scope creep. A change request typically states what's changing, why, and its impact on price and timeline, then gets signed off the same way the original quote was, so both sides agree to the new terms before work starts, not after a dispute about the invoice. Treating each change as its own small, documented decision also leaves a paper trail: if a client later asks "when did we agree to that?", there's an answer.

Good practice keeps the change request lightweight, it shouldn't take longer to raise than the change itself takes to build, while still capturing the price and scope delta clearly enough to stand alone.

Example

Midway through a build, a client asks for a new payment gateway that wasn't in the original scope. The studio raises a change request: one paragraph describing the addition, a fixed price, and an extra week added to the timeline. The client signs it, and only then does the work begin.