The Key Alignment of Change Management

Some project managers thought change management is a stand - alone initiative where it becomes a daily reality. The introduction of new technologies, new legislation, new ideas, new management, new customers, new global competitors, new geopolitical shocks/crises, new investors, etc., force organizations to change the way they do business. The American Management Association in 2006 did a survey concluded the following:

"1,400 executives and managers and found that 82% of them reported that the pace of change experienced by their organizations has increased compared with five years ago. Further, 7 out of 10 noted their organizations experienced disruptive change during the last year."

Certainly project managers need to accept the fact that organizational change is inevitable and won’t be stable forever! Organizations these days constantly need to seek to adapt keeping pace with new demands, otherwise they will run the risk of under-performing in the market and, ultimately, being forced out, from there I note that project managers probably require specific training to become truly effective proactive Change managers.

One of the PMP says: "Most project managers measured the success of projects (as project delivered) by the three traditional criteria of cost, quality, and schedule (based on PMI methodology). These three traditional values fall short today because the importance of stakeholder / customer satisfaction is being recognized as more important that any of the traditional measures. That is, the project is considered a success if the project stakeholders are happy with the results", in my opinion definitely I agree BUT along with considering the recognized traditional measures of PMI, Setting stakeholder expectations and assembling the appropriate project team is the first and most important phase of change management.
Perhaps we need to provide everyone with a concrete reason for the change. If not, we go for lack of adoption, give those that do accept change incentives and rewards. This will encourage them to persuade others to adopt the idea of change; change management must be looked at as something more than just a problem to solve, it must have a unique set of solutions for each individual project. It won't help to group the proposed change with every other issue that the organization is facing.

Future is part of change management process if what we do in any project celebrates success, this is a good time to rely on the project's results and determine how we got there by asking our selves, Did team members work well and deliver the goal? Did they follow the rules of your change management process? The most important challenge for organization’s implementing such change is to achieve the cultural or behavioral change that is often required to reach the planned benefits, even when it is approved that change is required.

Successful change projects will identify and communicate the vision, letting the employees know they are expected and empowered to play an active role in realizing the planned benefits, therefore change management is not the goal in itself.

An overall comparison with change management and project management in tasks achieving, project management tasks like create work breakdown structure, estimate time and schedule, assign and level resources and build detailed budget completed by the project manager himself, although prepare change management plans, communicate the business reasons for change, build a coalition of leaders to drive the change and manage resistance completed by change management team member and sponsor, change management, therefore, is not simply a collection of processes and tools applied by a change manager or a change management team, but is the implementation of processes and tools that are applied by key players in the organization.

We may redefine the meaning of change management as following:
"Change management is the creation and implementation of the roles, processes and tools that each of these groups use to effectively manage the people side of change."
An example of planning process of change management is often conducted by a change management team in a project to build customized strategy and approach based on the specific change and groups being impacted.

A core aspect of project manager’s role is to manage change within the project successfully; this is achieved by understanding the business and system drivers requiring the change, documenting the benefits and costs of adopting the change and formulating structured plan for implementing the change within the alignment of the new concept of change management defined in this article.
By Dr.Mohamed Selim El kayyali