Many projects within organisations fail due to the insufficient adoption of new systems and associated changes to how things need to be done going forward.

This is often as a result of insufficient change management interventions.

Whilst a great deal of time is spent on project planning and monitoring of project execution activities, change management initiatives are mostly neglected.

Change management initiatives need to be carefully planned. They do not happen by chance. Such initiatives need to map to phases of the overall project plan and should be managed as formally as the project execution activities.

12 Success Factors Relating to Project Change Management

In order to positively influence people’s attitudes and resulting behaviour, the following are important:

• Management needs to be seen to support the new initiatives.
• People must be able to see real day to day benefits for themselves.
• Projects need to be planned and executed minimising the impact on people’s daily lives.
• Identify and involve the users most impacted by the change and allow sufficient opportunity for them to provide input.
• Show how user input has been incorporated into the system and demonstrate how this is making a difference.
• Clear and effective communication needs to take place throughout the project lifecycle.
• Quality of training is a key success factor.
• A team approach is important.
• Management needs to encourage, enable, empower and reward people and remove obstacles along the way.
• A supportive workplace culture is necessary.
• Strong leadership needs to be provided.
• Ongoing post-project phase support needs to be structured properly and work effectively.

If most of the above are planned and executed successfully, the adoption of new systems and solutions and the overall success rate of projects will increase significantly.

What is your experience of change management initiatives?   If you have any questions or suggestions to improve this article, please contact the IntelliPERMIT team at Adapt IT.

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