Change Management Processes and Project Management Success

If the only constant is now change, it sounds like change management could be a major factor in achieving the expected results for a project. But change management also needs to happen in several ways. Just changing dates and checking for resource conflicts may not be enough. Good change management typically also needs to address the people part of the equation. That can be anything from ensuring that everybody is ‘on-board’ for a new deliverable timeline, to installing new priorities, work approaches, habits and attitudes.

(Ordered) Democracy is the Order of the Day

In many industries, command and control is no longer the only solution. In some, it isn’t a solution at all. Between tyranny and anarchy, the happy medium is a correctly structured, collaborative and contributive team environment. Team members need to feel involved and to know that their input and suggestions are taken into account. Project management applications must offer both technical ease and speed of schedule updating, together with tools to encourage constructive interactions and discussions.

Change Management Checklist

Project management software should offer functionality to help enterprises run projects correctly while handling curves and kinks in the project life cycle. It should have practical, usable tools to help management get the best results from their project teams and keep their stakeholders happy, including:

• Project portfolio management. Enabling the right project decisions to be taken to optimize the overall success of the organization.
• Resource engagement. Instigating enterprise-wide discussion on the best ways to move forward and benefit from insights that might otherwise have gone unheeded.
• Project vision. Building and maintaining repositories of supporting documents, conversations and data that can be consulted by participants and interested parties.
• Communication. Opening up channels with internal social networking. Streamlining reporting with real time activity timesheets and feedback. Integrating with other company systems for financial and human resource management.
• Positive urgency. Flexible planning controls to manage agile as well as waterfall project cycles.
• Momentum. Scheduling in short-term wins to keep good momentum going. Facilities in the project management applications to delegate responsibilities appropriately if team members are otherwise occupied.

Oracle Project Management Solutions

There’s an application, a module or a tool in the range of Oracle’s PM solutions to address all of the points above. Examples include:

• P6 EPPM for overall project portfolio management
• Instantis for portfolio management with added social networking
• Progress Reporter for real time, two-way activity assignment, reporting and feedback.
• Unifier for back-office integration with other enterprise applications
• AutoVue for efficiently handling practically any type of document associated with the project
• Contract Manager for managing third party work and payments
• BI Publisher for easily generating project reports the way you want them – or better still, the way your different stakeholders want them.

In the End, It’s about People Anyway

At the end of the day, each project is done for somebody, somewhere. Software and science are part of the process because they help speed things up and root out possible risk and errors. To paraphrase the old sales adage of ‘People buy from people’, here it’s ‘People do projects for people’. And the more your project management applications help improve project management without getting in people’s way, the more likely your project is to yield the required results, on time and on budget.