Project and Organizational Change Management

In my previous post I discussed the correlation between effective change management practices and project success.  After reading this post again, I think I need to be more clear regarding the concept of change management.  This clarity is especially important in the project environment.

In the project environment, change management typically refers to the process of handling requests for modifications to the original scope.  We develop processes to manage these change requests to ensure the stakeholders agree on the change, are willing to fund the change, and also permit the additional time required to include the change.  This process is referred to as a change management process.  Making this language even more confusing is when working on an software development project where change management also refers to the process of controlling the introduction of changes to a software product.

The diverse meanings for change management is rather unfortunate.  Project teams often focus on the more operations-based view of change management rather than including the more tactical and strategic view of change management.  In addition to governing the process for requesting scope changes and controlling changes to the software environment, project teams must also consider guiding the stakeholder adoption of the project deliverables.  Project teams, particularly software development teams, must address all three forms of change management.

Since project teams must deal with multiple types of change management, perhaps it is best that we are more clear about the form of the change we are managing.  In my courses I often introduce the terms of software change management, project change management, and organizational change management.  By providing the scope of the change in the term, we offer more clarity to the intended form of change management.

By the way, my previous post referred to the organizational form of change management.