Changing Work, Changing Needs

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.

  Benefits Realization   Change Management   Organizational Project Management   Talent Management  

I recently met someone who regularly reads the articles on ProjectManagement.com and was familiar with the focus I have had in the last couple of years on the way project management is changing. He is seeing in his own organization that project teams are expected to focus more on delivering to business needs and worry less about the triple constraints. He is also seeing that the rate of change on projects is increasing as those business needs are forced to adapt to changing circumstances after projects have been initiated.

However, he is also seeing that these changes are causing additional stress and strain in his project teams—and he wanted some guidance on how to deal with that. It’s very easy to forget that strategic changes to how work is done have very personal impacts, and perhaps I’m guilty of that for not writing on the topic sooner; but in this article, I want to try and put that right—and I’m going to focus specifically on project teams.

Recognize and understand
Project managers shouldn’t need to be told that adjusting to new ways of working is stressful; they are experiencing that for themselves as their leadership teams require them to make fundamental shifts in the framework of their project management approach. Having been trained to focus on delivering projects on time, on scope and on budget, PMs are now being …

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