Project change management is a complex undertaking. Change can add various types and severity of risks to the project success. Project practitioners have proposed various change management techniques and models. The proposed model broadly classifies changes into shift and drift type of changes. A drift change is an iterative, incremental and slow process. A shift change is a major change process happening in a short period of time. The proposed model allows for changes that are complex or alternate between the two types. A project management office can utilize this model to aid their change management planning.
Key Words: change management, shift, drift, modeling, project management office
Introduction
Change management is a continuous and incremental process. It requires refinement and constant supervision to ensure the desired change happens at the desired pace. Change management can lead to unintended or unforeseen consequences. A carefully tailored, specific and supervised change management process is essential to achieve strategic organizational objectives.
Change management as a project process versus operation
The question of whether change management is a project or an operation requires some thought. A project is generally defined as a temporary endeavor undertaken to deliver a product, service or a result (PMI, 2013a). In this sense, the process of change management is indeed a temporary endeavor to move away from an established process or product which concludes when the replacement process becomes operational or product becomes available. There are several models and detailed literature on change management methodologies and training is available elsewhere (PMI, 2013b).
For example, changing the way patients take a drug from injectable to oral is a change management process. First the company who makes the drug comes up with a new way of taking the drug. Then they advertise it to the prescribing physicians, establish the supply chains from their factories to the pharmacies, and advertise how to take it to the patients. The change is complete when the oral formulation becomes available and patients start taking the drug. This leads to a positive change of increasing convenience, reducing cost, eliminating painful injections and possibly improving compliance. The objective of creating a new product and thereby driving the change in the way of treatment is achieved and benefits delivered, marking completion of a project. In practice, however, the change management in a projectized or matrix organization works more like a continuous operation. As the PMO becomes aware of the need for a change because of various data coming in from its internal evaluations, stakeholder requirements or external requirements, a change process needs to be initiated. An organization can have a change management board in a formal or informal way initiate a change. This change management process can be within a project or can happen across several projects. The changes that affect multiple projects, are more resource intensive, or have uncertain outcomes are more likely to be resisted by the affected stakeholders. The PMO needs to be proactive and effective in implementing these changes.
As the change process is implemented, the PMO needs to identify and measure the interim processes and outcomes. A continuous feedback loop needs to be developed and utilized to ensure the change management takes place as per the change management plan. Once a change is completed, the outcomes are measured to identify the fit with the change objectives and the processes are changed further, if needed. In this sense, the organizational change management is an operation, which happens on an ongoing basis. A clear understanding of organizational change as a process is important for understanding the proposed model of change management.
Drivers of organization change
The proposed model classifies change process model as change shift or change drift (Exhibit 1). In fact, the shift and drift changes are the ways to categorize the changes in genetic composition of influenza viruses. The influenza or ‘flu’ is a viral illness with a seasonal pattern. The genetic composition of the flu virus changes over time. Some changes are slow and take place at approximately every twelve years, called a genetic ‘drift.’ The other changes, which take place rapidly, over a short period of time, are called a genetic 'shift.’ These genetic shifts and drift lead to various types of mutations in the virus, which leads to different types of flu infections (Bouvier et al., 2008).
Exhibit 1. Organizational Change Management Model: Shift and Drift Processes
Understanding this model and applying its underlying principles can be helpful in managing the change processes. The proposed model breaks down change processes into two broad categories of shift and drift. It also provides flexibility to manage a process change by moving it from one type of change to the other by breaking it down into sets of activities. These activities can be managed as a group or they can be handled independently.
Drift Process
A drift is a process that induces small changes in the project that happen continually over a long period of time. This may happen because of requirements changing continuously in small iteration, scope creep or process evolution. The resultant change can be invisible or imperceptible if observed within relatively close time points. This type of change is more acceptable to number of stakeholders. The stakeholders are more likely to be aware of incremental changes and less likely to be taken by an unexpected surprise. This can also induce an element of complacency, tolerance and acceptance.
It is relatively inexpensive in practice as the cost of change is generally not allocated separate from the operational project resources and budgets. However, the total cost of a project drift can be substantial in terms of resources or the impact on the outcome. In other words, a drift is like ‘watching paint dry.’ Although at a point in time the observer is unable to perceive the change in the color of the wall, when observed at two relatively distant points in time, the difference is clearly visible.
Shift Process
In contrast a shift is a process where an abrupt, major change happens in the project. A shift change can be a negative affect, or can be perceived as such by multiple stakeholders. Thus, it is also more likely to be resisted by the stakeholders. A shift change is likely to be considered a representative of the changing environmental enterprise factors. Since a shift involves generally a major change, it is also more likely to be measured in terms of resource and monetary cost. This cost may or may not be more than the drift change, however.
A shift change is also visible because of the inherent speed with which it is implemented. The collapse of several large financial institutions across the world in 2008 and 2009 can be considered an example of a shift change. These changes happened in a short period of time on a very large scale. Although the number of people who became unemployed as a result of this change -- the employees of the companies -- was relatively minor as compared to the number of people who had lost their jobs before and during the months of recession, the event carries a negative connotation and is considered a representative of “wall street excesses” and “governmental interventions.”
Organization change management model
In the proposed organizational change model an attempt is made to account for organizational shift and drift changes as observed from within a PMO. These changes can be identified separately or inter-related at one or more points.
Managing Shift Change
The shift change can be broken down into four key stages: Explain, Educate, Encourage and Exhibit.
Explain: At this stage, the change is explained to concerned stakeholders, who may or may not have an opportunity to provide feedback. Even if feedback is obtained, it may or may not be a possibility to take the feedback into account due to the nature and pace of the change. For example, when residents are asked to permanently evacuate their houses because of the possibility or occurrence of a natural disaster, there may not be any time to communicate anything other than the simple, often obvious, facts. When an organization goes out of business due to bankruptcy, the employees do not have any options.
Educate: At this stage, why the change is required is communicated to the stakeholders. This is possibly one of the single most important steps in change management process. Communication skills are critically important throughout the change management but nowhere more than during this stage of change management. Stakeholders can provide critical and useful feedback, which should be accommodated to the greatest extent possible.
Encourage: The change is placed into action during this stage. The stakeholders are expected to make required adjustment during this stage. This is also the learning stage for project manager. Early anecdotal evidence of a major problem can be identified at this stage. Many organizations implement a test or pilot phase during this stage. The project manager should maintain a running catalogue of problems and obstacles that arise during this phase, which can be meaningfully categorized into actionable data.
Exhibit: During this stage, the change process is almost fully operational. The change leaders should take responsibility to demonstrate the behavior that supports the change. A change can be institutionalized at this stage. Project stakeholders start exhibiting the behavior that accommodates the change to more or less extent. This stage also allows for a more systematic data collection for remaining issues and problems that can be acted upon by the change management board.
Managing Drift Change
A drift change is an iterative, incremental process that moves slowly, often unrecognized as a part of a change. Several components of a drift change can be identified as effectively part of routine project management processes.
Evaluate: Most project managers continuously review the status of the project in terms of schedule, cost, quality or other matrices of project benefits. The change management drift often begins during one of these reviews and evaluations. A need for changing the way one or more process takes place is highlighted.
Examine: As a result of these evaluations and reviews, the existing practices and process are examined for potential change process. These changes may not be separately identified as part of a change process. They can simply be identified as corrections required moving the project forward.
Enumerate: The corrections or changes identified as a result of the examination process are described in this process. Various possible options can be identified, described in detail, and finally one or more possibilities are identified as a suitable, viable alternative to the existing practice, product or process.
Construct: During this stage, the alternative course of action is explored further and a draft plan is constructed. This can be achieved by brainstorming, Delphi technique or by simply creating a work breakdown structure (WBS).
Demonstrate: During this stage, the stakeholders have an opportunity to provide their feedback on the alternatives. The process steps, WBS or the proposed alternatives are assessed from various angles of practicability and implementation.
Determine obstacles: This stage is the direct result of the prior stage where the implementation of the change process is demonstrated. During this stage the obstacles can be identified and catalogued.
List obstacles: This stage is the follow-up stage of determining obstacles. It is a distinct process and requires separate tools and techniques, which is why it is identified as a separate stage in drift change process. During this stage various statistical models can be developed or tested and prior lessons learned can be used for course correction. This information can also be documented in or identified from the project risk register.
Manage obstacles: Once the obstacles to change are identified, the project manager needs to actively manage them. Some obstacles to change can be eliminated, while the others can only be modified and an accommodation needs to be made for them. This is an ongoing process.
Preserve change focus: During this stage the change is under way. Accounting for the obstacles and risks, the project manager needs to effectively guide the change to its desired outcomes. It is easy to lose track of the desired outcomes and intended benefit at this stage, especially when the project manager is focused on managing obstacles. This is one of the steps where external consultants or experts can be especially useful.
Drive change forward: This stage is the action stage where most of the change is implemented or ‘rolled out’ to the stakeholders as well as clients. This stage is where often the stakeholders who are not affected in a major way by this change notice it for the first time. Change communication strategies are critically important during this stage.
Collect data: During this stage the effects of the implemented change start becoming visible. Stakeholder complaints or compliments may arrive during this stage. This stage requires editing the risk register, adding new risks and identifying the risks that did not materialize. This stage also requires excellent cataloguing skills from the project manager.
Analyze the data: This stage requires experience and is crucial in assessing whether the intended change has been overall beneficial and added to the strategic organizational goals. Quantitative analysis is useful in this stage; however, statistical results need to be validated against the qualitative data for a complete picture.
Benefits of the proposed model
The proposed model is one of the several ways in which an organization can manage change process. It offers a new way of approaching change processes while at the same time reinforcing the general explanation of prevalent practices. It attempts to identify major stages in the change management process for a project management office.
While the proposed model broadly groups the change process into two categories, it is also possible that a change starts as a shift and ends up looking like a drift or vice versa. The proposed model allows the possibility of managing a more complex change that alternates between shift and drift models.
The model allows for major categorizations and milestones thereby aiding in identifying possible organizational hierarchy responsible for managing the level of change. Building upon the proposed model, the organization can identify the complexity, urgency and priority of a change process. This understanding can then be utilized to allocate budgets, identify milestones and scope the skills requirements. For example, the expertise and experience of more senior project team members may be needed to manage a change that may be large, affect a significantly large number of stakeholders or have negative consequences for the organization. The low priority, low impact changes can be delegated to a project manager with lesser authority or burden of responsibility.
Within the PMO itself, this model allows for breakdown of responsibility of a group or unit for implementing a specific part of the change management process. This would enable assistance from external consultants and experts for a narrowly identified activity required to carry out the change process.
Managing change in an organization is a process demanding significant care and attention. It is expected that the proposed model will aid the project manager, project team members and the organization undergoing such a transformation by providing better insights and assist with execution and control.