Project management means planning, organising, and running a project. The goal is to reach the desired outcome while keeping within time, cost, and quality limits.
Adding a team member with project management skills can strengthen change efforts.
Tips for project management
Here are some tips for adding project management support to your change programme:
- involve someone with project management knowledge from the start of your change
- project managers need to be comfortable with uncertainty, especially during complex changes. They support rigorous procedures and strong decision-making in complex and simple changes. Project management processes need to be flexible and proportionate. Project plans can help keep track of the changes and make sure they are communicated well.
The role of project managers
When planning the change programme, project managers play a key role.
They need to think about:
- how to ensure the change strategy aligns with the organisation’s vision? How to manage connections with other change initiatives?
- how to involve people in the change?
- what governance processes need to exist to drive change forward?
- how to collect and analyse data to see what works and what does not in the change? How to evaluate the change’s impact?
During the change programme, project managers play a key role by thinking about:
- is the project remaining aligned to a clear vision and purpose?
- are we engaging and involving the right people in the right way?
- are governance procedures being followed and operating effectively?
- are financial and workforce implications being considered?
- does the data indicate that project outcomes are being achieved?
- does the project plan need to be adapted? Or is there a need to return to an earlier part of the change cycle?
- is learning from the project being captured?