THE RELATIONSHIP OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT TO IMPLEMENTING DESIRED CHANGE

THE RELATIONSHIP OF PROJECT
MANAGEMENT TO IMPLEMENTING
DESIRED CHANGE

Traditionally, project management has been how organizations managed
anything new. Organizations always have used projects to manage initiatives
that found “normal operations” inadequate for the task. Normal operations
are designed to accomplish a certain function, but they lack
flexibility. Managing a project to implement any truly new venture is
fraught with ambiguities, risks, unknowns, and uncertainties associated
with new activity.
Change is often a by-product of projects. Creating a project that operates
differently simply adds to the chaos. “Why don’t we just do it the old
way?” people ask. They usually are referring to the tried-and-true methods
of operations that had the benefit of continuous improvement; for example,
the inconsistencies had already been worked out of them by repetition.
When change is needed, in most cases someone already tried getting the
desired change using operations processes, and the “old way” failed to produce
results. Given the discomfort of change, there is usually a compelling
business reason for organizations and their management to undertake it voluntarily.
Usually, the reason is that change is a necessity. In most cases,
someone in a leadership role has determined that the results of the project
(the product or service and even the change) are desirable and that the outcomes
of making that change have value. In other cases, the dangers inherent
in not creating a project and making the change simply are too risky to
tolerate.
Once the outcome of a project has been established as beneficial, and
the organization is willing to undertake a project, the project manager and
team are engaged. Seldom is the project manager brought in at the earliest
concept development stages, although early involvement of the project
manager occurs most frequently in organizations where projects are linked
to the main line of business. The people who are engaged in the project—
as project manager or team member—are not involved voluntarily in creating
change. “My boss told me to,” is a more common reason why someone
becomes involved in a project.