The Case For A Dedicated Change Management Team

Large enterprise-wide efforts are complex and potentially involve changes to roles and responsibilities for employees in multiple groups. Getting all employees to row in the same direction is itself a complex effort and requires structure. Here is our prescription to managing complex change.

---

Key IT projects fail more often then they succeed. The top factors of project failure relate to leadership, project vision, organizational communication, distrust of change, and feelings of non-involvement. In short, people issues. Organizational Change Management (OCM) is a critical success factor for large enterprise-wide initiatives.  OCM is a framework to manage the effect and perception of changes brought about by the initiative to organizational roles and responsibilities. In other words, OCM address the human side of change.

Organizational Change Management has to be managed as effectively as the project itself. We prescribe a dedicated change team for critical projects that have high impact.

The change team should ideally include the following roles:

• Change Leader – Act as the overall program manager of the change effort
• Change Manager(s) – Manage change for individual functional areas
• Change Analyst(s) – Prepare, schedule and distribute change communications
• Subject Matter Experts – Possess specific tool and framework expertise and help train employees

​OCM for a project must be fully integrated into the overall project governance so that project managers can take appropriate action regardless of whether issues are related to the deployment of technology, or to ensuring employees are aware of and supporting the change effort.
 
A dedicated change team:

• Increases the probability of project success
• Manages the people side of change
• Provides a single point of accountability & responsibility
• Complements project efforts

---

​How do you perform the functions of OCM in your projects?