Discussion What Is Change Management and Why Is It Important?

In layman’s term, change management is a systematic approach for dealing with transition or transformation of goals, processes or tools. The main objective of change management is to implement ways to introduce a change, control the change and help people who are involved to adopt the change. Without adoption, changes will not be successful in delivering the desired outcome.

In this article, I will focus on change management at project level, sharing how the change management team navigated and facilitated the change for the project teams to adopt the AISG Agile project delivery framework.

First and for most, we set up a change management team comprising of project managers. Based on the members’ knowledge on Agile methodology and past experiences in managing projects, the team came up with an Agile-based project delivery framework covering 3 aspects, i.e. people, processes and technologies.

The change management team next communicated the change to the project teams, that make up of principal investigator, AI engineers, platform engineers and apprentices, by conducting briefings to introduce the framework and its benefits. During the briefings, the team solicited comments from the audiences and incorporated their feedback into the framework. The team also conducted subsequent briefings regularly to take care of new engineers and apprentices joining the project teams.

To introduce and implement the change effectively, It is not sufficient to only communicate the change to the project teams. The change management team followed up to provide close guidance and support to the project teams in adopting the framework for projects. Simple supportive act, like (i) giving a project team member a pat on the shoulder when the member correctly or suitably applied the framework or (ii) patiently explaining to the member on how to apply the framework more correctly and appropriately, goes a long way towards helping the project teams adopt the change.

As shown above, timely and clear communication to introduce the change and effective change control with proper guidance and support are integral parts of change management. They enabled the change management team in getting the project teams’ buy in on the AISG Agile project delivery framework and helped the project teams adopt the framework. The change was successful and it brought about successful delivery of close to 100 projects thereafter.

What are your thoughts on change management at project level. Do feel free to share your thoughts and experience on change management.