PM Africa Magazine Issue 01 | Page 42

PM Insight Project Management is dead! Long live Change Management! I n the fight to extract value from our investment in projects a new champion has emerged and it could change the face of IT project management as we know it. Change management has for sometime played a pivotal role in the delivery of strategic programmes, but in IT-enabled business projects there has been an assumption, too often proved wrong, that the operational areas will simply embrace change at the end of the project. Faced with the reality of too few projects resulting in beneficial change (or in many cases - any change) in operational practices; IT departments are looking beyond technical solutions. The traditional view of projects as deliverers of solutions which the business must somehow pick up and run with is long gone. Now we hear terms like “landing the project”, “operationalisation of projects” or “transitioning of projects”. With this, there is a realisation that benefits delivery demands a focus on business outcomes tightly linked to a clear understanding of what the desired benefits are and how these may be achieved in the business. To achieve this, project delivery and operational change must be intimately connected and this linkage must be planned maintained and forged together from the inception of the project through to its effective transition into the business. 40 In the Change Diamond (PiCubed, 2011) the facets link value to costs, strategy with operations , and delivery to adoption. The investment of effort, time and money is channelled into the realisation of benefits. Three stages are identified: The first stage is to make the change wanted – this is the fundamental step of engaging stakeholders, establishing the value and aligning the outcomes with the values and needs of the business. From this come the benefits and business cases, the enterprise portfolio and the translation of the deliberate strategy to the emergent or d