Change Management: Keeping It Off the Agenda!

Paul has run a plethora of projects in multiple industries throughout his 20-year career, ranging from process improvement to agile to most recently cyber-security. Paul is also a reputable speaker, drawing practical and humorous conclusions from the "trenches" of his employers. Paul's dedication as a PM practitioner started decades ago, when he became one of the first 10,000 people to earn the PMP.

  Change Management   Communications Management   Lessons Learned  

Recently I was handed a large, enterprise-wide project that would heavily impact the organization. Like many organizations, this company had struggled with the degree of change experienced in large system rollouts of the past. Lessons learned and end-of-project surveys surfaced comments such as “not enough training”, “poor communication”, “the system is difficult to work with”, “too much change”, etc.

Sound familiar? For this new project of similar scale, the sponsor requested that a “change management” consulting firm be brought in to assist. In the past, the change management role defaulted to the project manager, who seldom had the experience to pull it off but also had to prioritize this critical effort with the usual duties of keeping the project on track, dealing with issues, budgeting, communicating, etc.

When it comes down to change management versus a risk that would usurp the schedule, to which do you think the project manager will dedicate the attention? Is not on time, on budget and to spec core to a project manager’s job description? Is change management even mentioned in it?

It’s becoming a well-known fact that on time, on budget and to spec are necessary but insufficient to successful project delivery. Projects are expected to deliver business value, and project managers take …

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