Digital transformation has produced a number of great opportunities for developing both employee skills and the efficiency of work. Often, implementing change within an organisation can have a significant impact on an employee’s way of working and this can often lead to a natural increase in resistance to change, especially if the reasons for the change are not clearly apparent.
It used to be common for project management and change management teams to work independently across various projects and changes within an organisation. However, as both disciplines have evolved over recent years - moving into mainstream approaches - project managers and change managers in many organisations are now working more closely together in leading the implementation of change throughout the organisation.
Although both are unique disciplines with their own processes and tools, change management and project management are infusing to deliver improved business performance and results together. According to Prosci’s best practice research, 58% of organisations who merge change management and project management within their project have exceeded their project goals.
Our one-day Delivering Project Results workshop is designed for those with project management knowledge, as well as project leaders, project managers and project team members. The workshop helps participants to integrate their project activities with change management, meeting their project’s intended business outcomes, while using a common language and framework for change in project terms that they are familiar with.
New developments in Project Management
Enabling the ability to mitigate the resistance of people towards new developments in projects can often require a re-alignment of your focus as a project manager. Below we highlight three of the top project management trends that may require change management skills in order to implement them successfully throughout an organisation.
AI and Machine Learning
Although AI and Machine Learning are not necessarily new developments in project management, there remains significant potential for increased business benefits to be derived as the use of AI and Machine Learning grows and develops. As the possibilities go beyond natural language processing into predictive analytics, it can also begin to answer questions similar to:
- Which employees are overloaded and which aren’t performing?
And
- How many resources are necessary for a project in comparison to the previous?
During our training, we will share change management tools, templates, techniques and exposure to methodologies, common practices, language and frameworks that can be immediately applied to projects - all delivered by experts in the field.
Cross-Company Collaboration
Project management is also moving into areas such as cross-company collaborations - this occurs when companies work with vendors, freelancers, contractors and other businesses who provide deliverables important to a supply/value chain. Rather than a direct exchange, the modern-day client relationship is a flow of ideas and brainstorming between collaborating companies that can help to share data and improve service outcomes. This has an impact on project management as it may become confusing to guard the confidential information while nurturing the collaborative process.
It is important to control the balance of collaboration and brainstorming though, otherwise the Max Ringelmann effect may come into play; productivity falls as the group size increases. As he said "brainstorming can at best produce a light, irritating drizzle of complacent mediocrity".
Integrating change management and project management activities improves the flow of information. Participants of our one-day workshop will learn how to connect employee adoption and usage to their project's results and outcomes, learn to identify when their project needs change management resourcing, understand how change management drives better adoption of the new capability, technology, process, and create a common framework for engaging with change management resources and practitioners.
Flexible Workflows
In order to accommodate innovative hybrid methodologies, the software used for project management must become more flexible to allow new planning systems to step in. Software can no longer survive on the use of one methodology. Nowadays, users will expect more flexible technology that can adjust to user expectation. The project manager can coordinate between the different systems while coaching their team, providing more efficient and streamlined workflows.
Project managers and change management practitioners are experiencing more pressure due to the rapid developments in technology. We understand how important it is to have skilled project managers and change managers who work collaboratively. We can help participants define success by identifying their project objectives and benefits through discussion and in-class activities. They will also identify impacted employee groups and use Prosci's Change Management Blueprint to map change management work to their project’s life cycle.
Want to learn more about developing your skills as a project and change manager?
Download our Delivering Project Results brochure here, or register your interest for our next one-day workshop.
