Page 18 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

The thing is, it’s often not considered as “sexy” and IT Project teams have been known not to bring
their “A-game” to a change project. One Project Manager friend put it well – “It can be like the
difference between building a new bathroom and cleaning your old one” – this needs a reframe.
Especially now.

Regular readers know that I’m a football fan, Manchester United are my team (it’s been a rough
weekend, I’m writing this just after our exit from Europe!).

A business growth, market-disrupting IT Project can feel like getting your head psyched up for a 3 pm
August Saturday kick-off against Manchester City at the Etihad – easy to get fired up about. In
contrast, a business change project can feel like a cold, wet, wintry, Tuesday night League Cup tie at
Barnsley (no offence to my Tykes fan friends). The point is, we need to approach both as equally
important. In many ways, that game away at Oakwell might be your only chance of a trophy and
could save the season. Turn up to win!

We need to see our less sexy change projects through the same lens as the shiny, vibrant, exciting,
pioneering projects.

There are a number of areas where this happens – areas where IT Project teams can perform less
well on a ‘change’ project than they do in a ‘growth’ project and it think it is worth listing them.

6 Failure Flashpoints of IT Change Projects and How To Avoid Them
(AREAS TO CHECK THAT YOU’RE BRINGING YOUR ‘A-GAME’ TO A CHANGE PROJECT)

1 - Define the scope of the project – properly!!

The most common “failure factor” is the failure to define appropriate scope for the “business
change” project. Weird right? If this were a project delivering exciting market-disrupting growth
we’d be all over this!

In many failed IT change projects, objective are not keyed to specific business results. Often, the
project is too large scale, too diffused, and other times there’s a failure to identify specific, the roles
and responsibilities of team members.

Sometimes, project teams attempt incremental change, to keep the staff happy (no-one likes
change) whereas something more radical was needed to lead to effective change – which brings us
nicely onto the next “fail factor”.

2 - Never underestimate the impact of human factors

If only I had a pound for every time I’d read some variation of “resistance to change” as the cause of
death of an IT change project!! I would be very rich!

There was a survey recently that validates our collective resistance to change. Eight of ten of us hate
change! We choose the same meal when we order takeaway, we sit in the same seat to watch TV in
our living rooms, we always sleep on the same side of the bed. We want today to be the same as
yesterday – this is a hard-wired survival technique from the days when there sabre toothed tigers
outside our caves, we survived yesterday, yesterday was safe, repeat yesterday!
Change at work can be an emotional roller coaster, managed appropriately it need not get out of
control. In change IT projects it often isn’t managed appropriately, it does get out of control and the
intended change isn’t realised as a result.