Project Change Management

Book Review

By Connie Ford, CMC
Qunara Inc.
www.qunara.com
connie.ford@qunara.com

Book Title: Project Change Management: Applying Change Management to Improvement Projects
Authors: H. James Harrington, Daryl R. Connor, and Nicholas F. Horney
Publication Information: Published in 2000 by McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-027104-6

Author Profile for H. James Harrington, Ph.D:
H. James Harrington is the visionary International Quality Advisor for Ernst & Young, adding Business Process Improvements to today's business lexicon. With over 15 books to his credit and more than 45 years of experience, Dr. Harrington is considered one of the world's Performance Improvement gurus.

Author Profile for Daryl Connor:
Daryl Connor is an internationally recognized expert in the field of change management. Mr. Connor is the founder and CEO of the research-based consulting firm of ODR Inc. His previous books include Managing at the Speed of Change and Leading at the Edge of Chaos.

Author Profile for Nicholas Horney, Ph.D:
Nicholas Horney is the Vice President of Client and Constituency Relations at the Center for Creative Leadership and was formerly Vice President of Consulting Services at ODR Inc. Dr. Horney is well known for his articles and presentations on leadership development and change management.

Why This Book is of Value to Management Consultants:
Management Consultants who are faced with the challenge of delivering a business process improvement project understand the difficulties encountered for successful completion. A report by the Standish Group indicated that 91% of all information technology projects undertaken in large corporations failed. Over 30% of projects were canceled before completion. The estimate of failed TQM projects runs between 60% and 75% of the total number of attempts according to numerous articles in Fortune and Business Week.

This book hopes to change these statistics by helping project managers/management consultants to better understand how to integrate the discipline of change management into their projects. Typically, the emphasis of most project management activities is on the technical issues with minimum attention to the human aspects.

While project management focuses on what is to be changed, change management focuses on how the solution is to be implemented. By addressing the human aspects of change, the likelihood of successful project implementation will increase.

The book includes a 6-page glossary of change management and project management terms. The book also includes a CD-ROM, which provides an introduction to change and Management of Change by the authors.

Summary:
The book is organized into eight chapters. Chapters 1-4 provide a sound overview on the basics of change management and the tools typically used to manage change. Chapters 5-8 apply the change management tools discussed in the previous chapters to the project management methodology espoused by the Project Management Institute and to two typical change projects: a process redesign project and an SAP project.

This book is a step-by-step approach for applying the management of change methodology to a project.

Chapter 1: Change and the New Millennium, discusses why it is important to manage change on a major project.

Chapter 2: Change Management: Strategic Risks to Successful Project Implementation presents the Management of Change (MOC) methodology and the strategic risks that accompany a change.

Chapter 3: Change Management: Tactical Risks to Successful Project Implementation presents the tactical risks that accompany a change.

Chapter 4: Implementation Architecture, provides a road map for implementing change management. It also provides an overview of MOC assessments, surveys and tools, and when they should be used within a project.

Chapter 5: How MOC Fits into the Project Management Methodology, discusses how to integrate MOC into the project plan.

Chapter 6 and 7: Applying MOC to a Process Redesign Project demonstrates how MOC is integrated into Phases 1 to 4 of process redesign project.

Chapter 8: Applying MOC to an SAP R/3 Project discusses how to integrate MOC into a major SAP project.