The Importance of Change Management

I came across an article from PMI Today associating project success with change management abilities.  According to PMI, organizations with effective change management practices report 117% higher success rates than organizations with less effective change management practices.  This is a very significant difference.

Why are some organizations better at change management than others?  Certainly there can be cultural differences in the organization that affect their ability and willingness to adopt change.  However, the organizational culture of change resistance only considers the recipients of the change.  What about those groups introducing change into the organization?  We need to take a closer look at project management practices.

Keep in mind that projects are synonymous with change.  Almost each project results in some form of change to the organization.  These changes come in the form of a new or modified, products, services, or processes.  Since projects are so closely related to change, why isn't there more thought put into change in our project management practices?  We can see some change management effort sprinkled in our project planning but, in reality, change is often a secondary or tertiary concern.  We tend to focus on our project variables of budget, scope, and schedule.  We need to pay closer attention to change.

Change, and managing change is critical to successful project management.  Rather than having projects focus on the delivery of the change, our projects must also continue on to ensure the change is adopted and enduring change is realized.  This may require further process changes with our project management practices but with a 117% increase in success rates, a new, change-centric, approach to project management should be justified.

Reference:

Project Management Institute (2013, August). Change management is an essential capability for project managers. PMI Today.