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Change management

When your organization undertakes projects or initiatives to improve performance, seize opportunities or address key issues, they often require changes; changes to processes, job roles, organizational structures and types and uses of technology. However, it is actually the employees of your organization who have to ultimately change how they do their jobs. If these individuals are unsuccessful in their personal transitions, if they don’t embrace and learn a new way of working, the initiative will fail. If employees embrace and adopt changes required by the initiative, it will deliver the expected results.

Change management is the discipline that guides how we prepare, equip and support individuals to successfully adopt change in order to drive organizational success and outcomes.

While all changes are unique and all individuals are unique, decades of research shows there are actions we can take to influence people in their individual transitions. Change management provides a structured approach for supporting the individuals in your organization to move from their own current states to their own future states.

Change management in project management

Change management is an important part of project management. The project manager must examine change requests and determine the effect a change will have on the project as a whole. The person or team in charge of change control must evaluate the effect a change in one area of the project can have on other areas, including:

Scope: Change requests must be evaluated to determine how they will affect the project scope.
Schedule: Change requests must be assessed to determine how they will alter the project schedule.
Costs: Change requests must be evaluated to determine how they will affect project costs. Labor is typically the largest expense on a project, so overages on completing project tasks can quickly drive changes to the project costs.
Quality: Change requests must be evaluated to determine how they will affect the quality of the completed project. Changes to the project schedule, in particular, can affect quality as the workforce may generate defects in work that is rushed.
Human resources: Change requests must be evaluated to determine if additional or specialized labor is required. When the project schedule changes, the project manager may lose key resources to other assignments.
Communications: Approved change requests must be communicated to the appropriate stakeholders at the appropriate time.
Risk: Change requests must be evaluated to determine what risks they pose. Even minor changes can have a domino effect on the project and introduce logistical, financial or security risks.
Procurement: Changes to the project may affect procurement efforts for materials and contract labor.
Stakeholders: Changes to the project can affect who is a stakeholder, in addition to the stakeholders’ synergy, excitement and support of the project.