Today’s Business Environment
In today’s business world we seem to be navigating more and more change. We are continuously implementing updated and new software, redesigning processes or restructuring the business. The common theme to all of these initiatives is that we are attempting to maximize the way we do things, what we use or who we work with to achieve our business goals and strategic direction.
All is not good in the land of such projects. Many projects end up running over time, struggling to realize their benefits or just end up crashing and burning to rise like a phoenix as project 2.0 with a new alignment and purpose – maybe! Whether it is the need for speed, the challenge of getting it right or just achieving something viable, all to often the expectations of projects are perceived by others to be well beyond their clear success criteria; the details of the business case or statement of work.
Why does failure happen?
The temptation is to blame poorly constructed documentation, badly educated project managers or a lack of sponsorship and executive leadership. All of this is wrong. Ultimately what the project defines as success and the business thinks of as success are a distance apart. All of this disparity is because of a lack of change management.
What’s so special about Change Management?
Change Management is the structured approach to the transition of an
organization from a current state to a future state to achieve expected benefits[1]
It focuses on the people side of a change event or initiative and is primarily anchored in the need for people to adopt that future state to the best of their abilities. When we consider the business expectations of a project, they perceive this as being seen by the realization of the benefits of the project and/or the adoption of the new technology or other output generated within the project. In a nutshell the change management goals.
How does Change Management relate to Projects?
Now whether we focus on traditional waterfall project approaches we measure its success by delivery of what’s in scope, efficient resource (budget) management and timeliness. For an Agile project it will be delivery of a minimum viable product in line with customer or client needs. Whichever one of these we align to, in essence they deliver a thing to the business and do not support it after delivery. This is where change management comes in! Effective cooperation of project management and change management is required to ensure that organizational objectives are achieved for every project being delivered.
Projects are very much focused on successful technical implementation. Yet the business is looking for the adoption of the implemented new to measure success. Only when we integrate change management with the experience do we get prepared for the change, educated and engaged with the new and able to adopt and sustain this into the future.
Projects that do and don’t have Change Management…
Let’s walk through the two sides of the coin here with a typical project to implement a new case management system – we will call it CMS2.0 for the purposes here.
Let’s set the scene. Project Documentation outlines that CMS2.0 is going to be delivered by 31 July to 150 people across the organization. Those folks are a mix of the main admin teams and some customer facing, compliance and finance folks. The project runs through the technology side of things, makes sure there are training courses for the users to attend and engages with IT and the business units mentioned throughout the project timeline.
At “Go Live” on 31st July, our narrative splits in two. Option one, the project withour Change Management present and the alternative with its presence.
Without Change Management the project delivers the nice shiny technology to all those that need it. They have some training guides from the 1 days training course they went on and after roll out they slowly get up to speed, making mistakes along the way as they try to apply these guides to the work they are now doing. Many of the teams get frustrated and revert to the old system or other work around just to get the work done as best they can, a few folks begin to underperform, and some leave the organization because they just don’t get it. The new CMS2.0 is live in the organization but the organization is not realizing the benefits of its potential because of fewer folks, difficulty in adopting and those that do are not as proficient as they could be. The executive perception is that the project failed to deliver as promised, but the technical delivery as per the project documents has been met. Delivery on time, on budget and within scope.
Now what if change management was present? On 31 July the system goes live in the business. The folks across the teams have been engaged with the change, feel part of it and have been learning hard to understand how it will affect their work. They have attended training courses and had discussions after to relate this to their work. There is a ripple of excitement for the new system and coaching plans for managers and support methods for after the roll out are in place. Within a month of go live everyone is at full steam, happy with the new system and working well. Nobody has resigned, there are minimal performance challenges and the benefits of faster working and higher volumes are being readily seen. Executive leadership are thrilled by the success and looking to the next opportunity.
Conclusion
While I may have been somewhat superficial in my descriptions of the different types of project delivery, the essence is core. That essence is that change management is the key to having projects that are seen as successful not just technically successful on paper.
[1] Copyright © 2019 Association of Change Management Professionals® (ACMP®) All Rights Reserved
