Baby steps… we have all heard the mantra, “Crawl before you walk!” In business, we tend to want to sprint towards the finish line and fix things quickly. We need to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day; neither was your business. It took months…years…to develop your current culture and business practices, warts and all. It will take time to change them.  

Change initiatives often masquerade as software projects. A system conversion. A new vendor system implementation. Generative AI assessments. While all of these are complex undertakings, the expectation is that they will improve the organization and resolve some of the past ills that have ailed the firm. If viewed solely as software projects, much will be missed in the execution of your project. Of course, defining software requirements, setting a budget, and scheduling resources are all key. But have you identified the organizational issues you are trying to solve? Have you defined the desired outcomes, the benefits and how to measure them, and how to communicate and get buy-in from all levels of the organization? This will be more important than just having a successful software implementation. It will drive acceptance and adoption. 

Taking Those First Steps

Let’s take a system conversion project as an example. Which users are directly affected? Which are indirectly affected? How will they be affected? How will you prevent issues from occurring? How will you resolve issues when they happen? We’re not just talking about software bugs, but about communication breakdowns, omissions in processes, dealing with upset clients, etc. How will you measure these?  

What adoption rate would be considered a success? What amount of staff turnover is expected? How are internal control processes – audits and segregation of duties – affected and addressed?  

All of these questions should be addressed as you begin the software project. Not when you are within a month of implementation and still trying to determine how not to upset your end users. We dealt with that in our last blog post. Most often, organizations do not have people on staff that can manage resources, manage projects, and manage change. It takes a lot of “tion” words: communication, coordination, collaboration, elaboration, and the most feared, deliberation. Being hasty is a recipe for failure. Planning is essential. Buy-in is crucial. And a willingness to modify the plan when situations change is a must.  

What’s the Next Step?

Once you’ve decided that communication, training, adoption, and ongoing success of the initiative are as important as getting the project across the finish line, you will want to engage with someone who has success with Change Management.  As you can probably tell from this post, the disciplines often overlap with project management but are not always the same and may not be doable by a single full-time individual. And resource management normally does not address either discipline. 

Your consultants at Essential PM Services know how to address these issues and plan for successful delivery of your project and change initiatives. If you could use help in this area, contact us to learn more.