As far as I remember, when I was in my first year in high school our teacher in science asked us, "what is the only constant thing in the world?”. We were all puzzled and curious of what that thing was. We were all browsing our textbooks and whatever resources we had had time but we saw nothing. Our teacher revealed that it was CHANGE. It is the only constant thing in the world. We face changes in every single day of our lives and we respond to these changes differently. "Change We Need, Change We Must", this is the campaign label of one of the politicians who ran in the last 2010 barangay elections and it was answered by his major opponent, "Change? What for? We are the Best!” It is funny to hear them throwing those lines to each other but that lines woke up the people to open their eyes to see what's really happening around them. Sometimes we need to change ourselves to be the person we wanted to be. We are curious creatures but some of us hate changes. They hate to adapt on new things, introduce new rules, and bring in a new system of thinking and new procedures. Human thinking and behavior works around the concept of “comfort” They become comfortable with a thing and they settle into it and we don’t want it to change. They become very used to it, and they eventually become conditioned by the thing, so that they will do almost anything to keep themselves in that position. I agree to it but sometimes we need to go out in our comfort zones. We need to jump in the curve we are in. Seeing change happen somewhere else and seeing how beneficial it can be is often a great experience. It can be an empowering experience. It can be even frustrating to see how by changing, other people and other systems seem to advance and do better than others. Or do better than us, by moving forward in some way. We are all human. We all want things to change if we see the real benefits. Those benefits can be so many things. And all because someone had the smart idea of changing something, and making things better somehow. Change never happens without consensus.
Is Project Management the best way to implement change?
Project Management is a methodology and a discipline which can bring significant benefits to organisations by:Ensuring limited resources are used on the right projects, Harnessing the energy of staff in achieving beneficial change, Managing complex changes in an organised way and Assessing risks, defining goals and key success areas and setting quality objectives. Every organisation has finite resources and, therefore, a limit to the number of projects it can initiate and control. Pushing too many projects through a resource limited organisation causes gridlock and stress. Managing the project portfolio efficiently is a fundamental principle of good project management. Because most projects involve new ideas and learning (even a project to build houses or flats may involve new materials or unusual soil conditions or there may be new initiative for tenant selection or co-ownership schemes) project management has evolved a discipline to manage the new and unusual. Its objective is to first, Define the project. A Project Definition document should be prepared and formally signed off by the Steering Committee. This document defines the goals, objectives, benefits, deliverables, exclusions, assumptions, business sponsors, responsibilities, estimated costs, timescale and serves many purposes. Second is, Ensuring the Project is a Manageable Size. A very large project should be cut up into more manageable sub-projects, which only depend on completed sub-projects. The project planning methodology provides a good tool to subdivide a major project into more manageable sub-projects with short-term deliverables. Each project plan should itself be subdivided into a number of key milestones. This helps to provide continuous delivery and to ensure that actual progress is measured on a regular basis. For example, a recent large project involved two quite separate project plans for different stages of the project, development and implementation. Each plan consisted of approximately 300+ separate tasks and approximately 30 key milestones. Third is, Getting the Right Resources. A major factor in the success of projects is to make available customer and supplier managers with high levels of experience in the business and in project delivery and to have these people available early on. Big projects need substantive and appropriate resources. Dedicated resource provides time to think it through. Two or more people equal different experiences, networks and a healthy debate. Getting good people appointed as dedicated resources for projects early on is often a tough challenge and some compromise is frequently necessary. Fourth is, Getting the Right Project Manager. An experienced Project Manager should lead the project on a day-to-day basis. For large projects, this should be a dedicated and full-time role. Full-time and dedicated resource will ensure that a continuous focus is maintained on moving the project forward. In theory all business projects should be led by the business. In practice, many business functions do not have the required project management skills, experience or disciplined approach. A good working compromise is to appoint two people to work together in a partnership, a Project Manager and a User Representative. The comprehensive nature of these two roles should not be underestimated. Fifth is, Defining Roles and Responsibilities. he Project Manager must ensure that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. The organisational structure should be kept as simple as possible. Sixth is, Monitoring and Reporting Progress. The project plan should be monitored and updated on a weekly basis. This is important since tasks are usually underestimated and many new tasks will be identified as the project moves forward. Seventh is, Consultation and Leadership. During all stages of the project, there should be widespread consultation with many parties. This will ensure that when difficult decisions have to be made, they are made clearly, forcefully and quickly. Engage in lots of consultation, but do not have too much democracy. If you want to achieve a real business result in a realistic timeframe, a small team operating on Stalinist principles is more likely to succeed than large committees acting as talking shops. This is particularly important for regional, cross regional and global projects. the next is close down the project when completed then review it to ensure the lessons are learnt and widely understood. It is this structured approach that makes project management the best method for change management.
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