The development and implementation of organizational initiatives is often governed by two separate yet equally important functions: project management teams who focus on building the business solutions for use in the organization and change management teams who prepare the organization to adopt the solution. Traditionally, these two teams work separately, with one team passing the project to the next team once their role is completed. This approach, while common, often creates many problems.
Why Integrate Project Management and Change Management?
At first glance, it’s obvious why organizations typically silo their project and change management efforts. In many ways, they are completely different functions, with project management focusing on building and activating the solution and change management being responsible for activation and realization of value.
In light of that, separating their efforts seems to make sense, but let’s look at the situation from a slightly different perspective. Envision a scenario in which two couples are sharing a vacation in a place that neither group has visited before. The first couple is handling the travel and lodging accommodations, while the second couple is planning the daily itinerary. Let us further imagine that these two pairs will be traveling separately, with no communication during the planning process. Bearing all that in mind, how successful do you think their vacation will be?
This scenario, though imaginary, bears a striking resemblance to the way that many initiatives occur: they are managed by vastly different groups pursuing completely different goals with minimal communication between the groups. Creating a strategy in which the project and change management teams work together will drive efficiencies in the following five areas and greatly improve the likelihood of the organization successfully adopting the new way of working.
Integrating Project and Change Management Helps Boost Adoption Rates
1. Unite on Intent, Purpose, and Goals
The key problem in the vacation scenario is a lack of alignment. Project and change management professionals approach projects from very different perspectives with very different priorities. That is why it is critical to align them using a shared intent, purpose, and final goal. When launching any enterprise-level project, the first step should be clearly defining its goal. Once both teams are aligned, it will be much easier to clarify roles and ensure that everyone is moving in the same direction. Without that shared destination, a project is much more likely to suffer delays, frustrations, and disjointed results.
2. Identify and Minimize Resistance Factors
Risk management is an essential component of project and change management. For project management, risk focuses on scope, cost, and schedule. As projects usually represent significant investments, reducing risk to those investments involves delivering the intended solution on time and on budget. Typically, it is the change management team’s responsibility to identify and mitigate potential obstacles to adoption. If both teams work in silos, however, it means that the change management team will not be able to identify these friction points until after the project management team has finished building the solution for use within the organization.
An adoption can be successful only when obstacles are addressed early. The change management team must be involved during the development of the solution to identify these obstacles and collaborate with the project management team to remove them during solution development. If you eliminate that collaboration, you risk making it difficult for both teams to work efficiently.
3. Provide Sufficient Time for Readiness Activities
The change management team’s goal is to move employees through several different phases to get them ready for the new way of working. Typically, that means changing employees’ mindsets from awareness of the solution to understanding it; accepting it; committing to it; and, finally, adopting it. When both project management and change management teams work together to remove potential obstacles during the development stage, they will greatly accelerate the speed of adoption.
Even if an organization is incredibly adaptive to change, there still may be significant steps—such as upskilling efforts and structural changes—that often must take place before the organization introduces an enterprise-level change. When the change management team has visibility on what the project management team is doing, they can put these steps into place early to ensure a much smoother transition.
4. Streamline Communication
Communication is critical to keeping teams focused on the project outcomes and how they will deliver value to the organization. The change management communication plan focuses on overcoming resistance and driving effective adoption. The sooner the change management team is brought in, the sooner the project team and employees begin moving toward an attitude of adoption. That can happen only when the change management team is involved in the initiative from the beginning. An effective communication management plan should flow in all directions, providing stakeholders with the insights necessary to do their best work.
For instance, change management teams routinely administer employee assessments that provide valuable insights into employee comments and concerns. Sharing these insights with the project team will improve their ability to create a solution that aligns with employee needs. Likewise, the project team has access to valuable development details, which the project team can share with the change management team, who can use them to overcome resistance and create employee buy-in. Clear, ongoing communication benefits everyone involved in the project. Now, imagine how effective an organization’s project and change management efforts will be when those teams remain in silos.
5. Create a Seamless Transition from One Team to the Next
Traditionally, once the project management team has completed their work, they pass the project to the change management team for implementation. This transition can be incredibly disruptive, as one team scrambles to pick up where the other left off. Active collaboration between the project management and change management teams can replace this sudden shift with a more gradual transitioning of responsibilities over time. In this model, the project management team performs most of their activities on the project’s front end, then begins winding down their role while change management ramps up their activities. This overlapping of responsibilities ensures a smooth transition with fewer delays, established workflows, and clear intentions.
Without collaboration, it takes longer to adopt the new ways of working. A hard handoff will require considerable time to brief the change management team on what the project team has been doing and why. Worse, it is possible that the project team members may have moved on to other projects. For these reasons, it is much better for the project manager and change manager to work together and collaborate from the beginning.
Integrate Project and Change Management to Maximize Adoption
Far too often, the project management and change management teams function in isolation, creating unnecessary delays, miscommunications, and clumsy transitions. Embracing a more collaborative approach that aligns the efforts of both teams vastly increases the rate of adoption by providing a shared goal, identifying and minimizing resistance factors, providing sufficient time to introduce new ways of working, streamlining communication, and ensuring a smooth adoption.
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