Traditional Change Management Is (Almost) Dead

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Change Management  

If I were to suggest that change management were more important than ever—and point to the continuous flow of changes that most projects experience between initiation and delivery—many of you would likely agree with the statement. It seems like one of those obvious things that doesn’t even need saying.

But I’m actually going to suggest something completely different.

Traditional change management is now almost irrelevant on many projects, exactly because of the continuous change that projects are being subjected to. Let’s back up a little so I can explain…

Traditional change management
In plan-driven project delivery, change management was historically better labeled as “change control.” When I first started managing projects, it was understood that there was likely to be tension at some point between the sponsor who wanted to make changes to scope, schedule and/or budget, and the PM who wanted to resist those changes.

On many occasions, I told a sponsor, “You are going to delay the project just by asking us to analyze a change because I will need to take team members off their assigned tasks.” The underlying message was clear: “I don’t want to do it.”

Thankfully, the attitude to change has evolved somewhat. Now, it is increasingly recognized that changes are a necessary part of …

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