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.
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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