The Best of Change Management by Jason Wesltland

The Best of Change Management A selection of professional insights from the Blog archive

Since 2008 our project management professionals have been sharing knowledge, experience and learning with online readers via the Project Manager Blog. Their collective wisdom provides a wealth of how to, top tips and best practice advice, for project managers, teams and businesses. To make their writings more accessible we’ve created a series of “Best of” project management topics available free to download and share. Here is a collection of excerpts and insights from blog posts that discuss change management and how process and project software may help project managers adapt quickly and effectively in the face of change. Enjoy!

Jason Westland CEO ProjectManager.com

3 Ways to Manage Project Management Plan Changes ............................................................................. 3 Project Manager Sanity and Change Management Software ..................................................................... 6 PM Program for Quickly Managing Change ................................................................................................ 9 How to Manage Change on Projects ......................................................................................................... 11 30 Day Free Software Trial ........................................................................................................................ 12

3 Ways to Manage Project Management Plan Changes There’s a six letter word that instills fear into most Project Managers…CHANGE. We’re not talking about the minor day-to-day changes that come and go with each project, but rather the wholesale major changes that have the ability to derail a project management plan and sometimes even careers, if not properly managed! Why do such changes occur and what can you do to make it through such changes intact? This article will focus on some reasons why changes happen to even the best project management plan and what you can do to make it through such changes gracefully.

Change is Everywhere so You’ll Have to Deal With It Change is all around us. The seasons change, children change, and our relationships change. We change jobs, clothes and moods. Our friends as well as our likes and dislikes all change over time. We’re used to dealing with change every day of our lives. Why is it then, that when it comes to our project management plan, we may be surprised, even irritated when change creeps into our projects? One reason is that Project Managers typically do not like change. We like putting things in nice, orderly boxes and categories (ever heard of a WBS?). We like to plan things from beginning to end and come in each day knowing what’s next on our list of things to get done. We like it when everything falls into place on our project management plan, and each step we take is a solid step moving forward, not sideways, or (gasp)…backwards. Guess what? We need to accept and even embrace change to remain viable as a Project Manager. Below are some causes of change and what we can do to make the best of the situation when change occurs on our projects.

A Better Way - Your project kicks off with the most recent understanding of the technologies and tools available to you and your team at that time. Months may pass before it’s realized that there’s a different tool or new technology that may, in the long run, make the deliverable of the project more sustainable or scalable. The downside is that in the short-term this introduces change to your project and will require a bit of an overhaul of your project management plan. Missed Requirements - Try as we might, it’s next to impossible to capture every single requirement that’s necessary for a successful implementation of a project. A team of business analysts may be assigned to take on this task. However, the expression “you don’t know what you don’t know” has a tendency to rear its ugly head at some point in the lifecycle of a project. It may be that a system the project integrates with may have been overlooked, or a smaller, yet important stakeholder’s requirements were missed. Either scenario introduces change into the equation. This is one area that you can focus on to capture as many requirements as possible by identifying every stakeholder that could have a say on the outcome of the project. It’s easy to overlook the end-user or the stakeholder that you may view as not having much to say about the final deliverable. While it’s not your job as a Project Manager to collect and document these requirements, you can work with the business analysts assigned to your team to make sure that everyone has had the opportunity to provide their input. This will prevent you from being blindsided by a change to your project management plan you would have otherwise never seen coming. Market Pressure - You may feel that you have plenty of time to properly complete the project you have been assigned. But then your Sales team comes back from the most recent Trade Show and informs everyone that ‘your competitors are on your heels and you need to get to market in half the time you had originally expected.’ The result? You guessed it…change to your project management plan.

How to Accept and Embrace Change You may think that Change is something you may always have a hard time accepting, let alone embracing. You’ll find that by following the suggestions below you can separate yourself from other Project Managers and make a name for yourself as someone who can absorb and execute changes introduced to your project. ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

Accept It - Go into every project with your eyes wide open and accept that change is going to occur. You know that the end of the project could be quite different to how it was originally planned. That’s OK. Think of your project in financial terms… The beginning of your project is like a Balance Sheet at the beginning of one period. The end of your project is like that same Balance Sheet at the end of the period. If there’s any activity at all during this period, these two Balance Sheets will be different. You’re able to bridge these changes by means of the Income Statement. Carefully documented Change Requests and Logs can serve as your Project Income Statement. It can bridge the gap between how the project was originally planned and how it ultimately ended up. Plan for It - You can’t say you know that change will occur to your project management plan and then do nothing to accommodate these changes. Have a contingency plan in place (time, resources, and cost) that can absorb part, if not all, of the changes that’ll occur. Have a Project Change Control Template ready to go, understand what would be considered billable vs. non-billable up-front and have procedures in place with relevant stakeholders to review and approve/reject changes that may arise. Roll with It - Did you know that high rise buildings are designed with enough flexibility to sway up to a couple of feet in each direction to prevent them from breaking apart and crumbling in high winds and bad weather? This flexibility allows them to sway in the breeze while maintaining their structural integrity and safeguarding the occupants within. You need to replicate the ways of a Project Manager. Maintaining a certain amount of flexibility will allow you and your team to sway with the changes that may come your way, while at the same time, keeping the entire project intact. We all need to face the fact that change to our project management plans are inevitable. Change comes from diverse sources and is incessant. It’s the highly skilled Project Manager that accepts and even embraces this change by accepting the fact that change will occur, plans for it and ultimately has the flexibility to absorb this change and keep the project intact. ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

Project Manager Sanity and Change Management Software Change is one thing you can be nearly 100% guaranteed to occur on any project. No matter how carefully planned, how many people were involved, and how many “deep-dive” meetings were held to uncover all of the requirements…something will have been missed. Or, time will pass and what seemed to work at the inception of the project is no longer relevant and requires an adjustment to the scope, schedule, or quality of your project. Regardless, change will happen and you will be right in the middle of it. This is something you will need to accept as a Project Manager or you will drive yourself, and others, crazy by thinking otherwise. Below are some of the most common causes for change on a project as well as some suggestions for how to gracefully implement change and ideally increase revenue in the process with or without change management software.

Three Common Causes for Change 1. Missed Requirements The most common reason for a project changing would be missed requirements. In today’s fast and furious business environment, there never seems to be enough time to do something right, but there is always enough time to do something over. Someone comes up with a great idea for a project, or a potential client walks in the door with a project they need implemented and everyone is ready to start “building” immediately. A couple brief strokes of the dry erase marker on the white-board, a highlevel flow chart, and a quick conversation with one or two of the project stakeholders and everyone is off to races. Days, weeks, or a month or two may pass and it quickly becomes apparent that these ad hoc planning sessions really didn’t constitute “planning” but rather allowed somebody the ability to “check this off their list” so the fun part of the project could begin. Take your time up front. Get Business Analysts involved if need be. Everyone will push you to quickly get out of the Planning stage. You have to fight this influence. Reason ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

with them, show them the benefits of planning up-front and how it will ultimately take less time to complete a properly planned project with as many requirements uncovered as opposed to one that is shoddily thrown together. There’s a saying in construction to “measure twice…cut once”. This same principle applies regardless of what type of project you are managing. Take the time to gather all requirements up front (translation: as many as you possibly can…don’t just blow through this part) and you’ll save yourself a lot of time and money later. Once these missed requirements have been captured in whatever change management software you are using, you are now ready to move forward. 2. Missed Stakeholders This is a variation of Missed Requirements, however, a bit more egregious. All requirements have been captured and the project is moving along just fine. Everything is on-schedule and on-budget and you are a happy camper. Then, someone pops their head into your office and wants to know what this project is all about. They just heard about it from one of their vendors (not even someone from your company) and believe it is certain to have an impact on the way they conduct business. What?? You didn’t even know this group existed. They weren’t even contemplated in the planning sessions that were conducted. Now you find out that they have a vested interest in the implementation and outcome of this project! This opens a Pandora’s Box that is hard to close and sure to negatively impact deliverables, schedules, and everyone’s expectations around the project. Not insurmountable, but at the same time this really introduced substantial bump in the road. Don’t assume everyone knows about the project and has provided their input. This falls into the category of “you don’t know what you don’t know” and requires extreme due diligence on your part (and especially the business analyst if you are working with one) to make sure all stakeholders are present and accounted for. These changes may take a bit more time to capture in your change management software as it will expand into a whole new set of requirements, but the effort will be worth it. 3. Misaligned Expectations ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

Your sales team would never deliberately do a bait-and-switch…but let’s just say what the customer was sold may be a bit different than what can be built. This turns into a tricky conversation that lends itself to its own article, but does present you, as the Project Manager, with some challenges. The customer now has some decisions to make.  Are they going to accept the project as-is even though this may be different than their expectations? &/or  Will they require customization of the project to meet their needs which will undoubtedly introduce more time and cost to the project? It will be important to document this change to the project regardless of what decision they make. This realigns everyone’s expectations and many times could be compared to hitting the ‘reset’ button. Missed requirements, missed stakeholders, and misaligned expectations are all problematic areas that are a hotbed for introducing change to your project. Don’t be naive to think change won’t occur. Rather, earnestly monitor these areas where change could occur, track them with your change management software, and do everything you can to eliminate these causes of change early and often.

How to Bridge this Change Nobody ever thinks that a project will end up the way it started out. The result is always going to be different (either slight or substantial) than what was anticipated. Your job as a Project Manager is to bridge this difference. One way to look at managing change is comparing two financial balance sheets from two different periods. You can clearly see the numbers change, but you have no idea or concept for how this change occurred from one balance sheet to the next. Then, you introduce the Profit and Loss statement into the equation and you see how income and expenses caused the balance sheet to fluctuate. The P & L statement is what bridges the two Balance Sheets together.

The same applies with changes that occur on a project. Your project will end up different than it started out. That’s OK and should be expected. You just need to bridge the gap by using change management software to document the changes and bridge the gap.

PM Program for Quickly Managing Change There are forces that are exerted on our projects every day. We can implement whatever project management program we see fit, but we have to understand that pressures will be exerted on nearly each and every task that is undertaken. Forces range from resources taking longer than originally expected to requirements being completely wrong, or missed on a project. It’s a project manager’s job to exert their influence in these areas in order to keep a project moving forward. One area that comes up time and again is the force of a client or end-user wanting to change something on a project that is already underway. Not only is it underway, it was agreed upon that what is underway is exactly what the client or end-user needs. Everything has been set and ready to go in the project management program… and now there’s a change in plans! This reality has caused many to overreact in the project manager community. Here’s an example: A client is working with a company to put together an Hours and Attendance application. This custom application will allow their employees to check-in/check-out at the front desk and then either get on with the job at hand, go to lunch, or head home. The client decides that the originally agreed upon green tint of the ‘check in’ button needs to be a shade or two darker. “Sure, no problem,” the project manager says. “Let me put together a Change Request form to make sure we capture this request. This will of course take our Engineering team a few days to determine the scope of the work, our testing team to see how long it will take them to make sure the change is made. Then, we’ll of course need to get executive approval on this color change prior to coming up with the final amount that that this change is going to cost. We’ll then ProjectManager.com © 2013 All Rights Reserved

present this to you, probably after two weeks, and then based upon your approval we’ll schedule this button color change in to our project manager program and get it done in the next couple of weeks”. Seriously!? As ridiculous as that sounds, these types of conversations take place. They unfortunately take place for a valid reason. This is because resources, project managers, and companies have been burned by the incessant stream of one-off change requests that the client feels are necessary to get things right. There’s no project management program in place that could keep up with some of the requests that end users will make of the project team. Unfortunately, this has caused some end-users to just roll their eyes when a project manager brings up the words “change request”.

Is There a Better Way to Manage Change? Is there a better way to manage change requests? Is there some type of project management program a PM could implement that would take the absurd out of the equation? Yes, and it relies upon thresholds. This type of project management program isn’t necessarily ideal for all projects. You may work on a project or in an environment where changes are few and far in between. In that case it wouldn’t make sense to implement such a project management program to manage to change. If, however, you work in an environment where change is the only constant, then you may want to consider this approach. The secret to managing change through thresholds relies upon the following categories: Small Changes: Minor changes in this project management program are those changes that can be made in no time at all. These changes will have zero impact to cost, scope, delivery, or quality of the project. They are typically cosmetic in nature and even if something goes wrong with the change it will not negatively impact other areas of the project.

Let’s say, the client wants to change the color of the button from a light green to a dark green. The project manager will be able to accept and approve this type of change if it meets the criteria above. There’s no reason to jump through all the hoops mentioned at the beginning of the article to obtain approval. By the time all those hoops are jumped through, the change could have been made and everyone moved on to other components of the project. This doesn’t mean that the change is not documented. It’s important to keep a record of everything that changed, but it’s as simple as putting it in a change request log and then letting the team know to make the color two shades darker. Medium Changes: Medium changes are a step above small changes. These may cause a slight change to the cost, scope, delivery, or quality of the project, but not big enough that it alters the overall business value of the project. A project management program for implementing this type of change could be to present it to a Change Control board. This would be comprised of yourself, the client, and one or two other people in your company (such as a functional manager or executive). The object would be to get all to agree upon the change. Again, this should take a matter of hours to complete and not be dragged out over days or weeks. A simple form can be used with signature lines for everyone’s approval and then the change can be implemented. Large Changes: The last category is large changes. These types of changes and approvals justifiably will take longer to approve and implement. These are the types of wholesale changes that could cause the ROI of a project to change or the business value to erode. These are the types of changes that call into question the need to even continue with the project. A project management program or process needs to be put in place to ensure that executives in both companies are aware of the impacts.

How to Manage Change on Projects http://youtu.be/tMR7jVefRIQ Watch as Devin Deen, Content Director here at projectmanager.com, presents a short video on How to Manage Change on Projects, by implementing change management best practices.

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