Managing Business Transformation – a Practical Guide (Book Review)

by Melanie Franklin, IT Governance Publishing, Ely, 152 pages,  £24.95 RRP (review copy provided free of charge by the author)
Pragmatic PMO Rating: ****

This book is intended as a practical guide to understanding and managing change that will benefit your business. It covers the differences between change management and project management, and how to integrate the two.

It starts by loosely defining change management (making a large change to a business that involves a large proportion of the organisation), and breaking it into four stages (understanding; preparing; implementing and embedding). Each chapter of the book deals with one stage before finishing with a look at the alignment of change management with the project management that underpins it.

Chapter 1 (Understanding) suggests reviewing the business case to understand the drivers for change, and comparing the “from” state with the “to” state to understand its scale. It recommends cultivating support using a vision statement as early as possible to increase participation and reduce resistance.

Chapter 2 (Preparing) proposes producing a road map to the desired final state, listing what will stop, what will continue and what will start as a result of the change. This “paves the way” for the change and smooths the transition. Plans should be built constructed in both top-down and bottom-up directions, and will not need many updates. Plans should be communicated to stakeholders often enough to ensure the message gets across, and tailored to their needs.

Chapter 3 (Implementing) describes building the change team and ensuring various team roles are represented. It discusses potential emotional reactions to the change, and offers ways to address these to help those affected to move through the change smoothly. It maintains that change managers need more “friends” than average, and offers ways to cultivate this.

Chapter 4 (Embedding) describes how the change progresses from “new” to “normal”. It recommends measuring adoption, and dismantling the old ways. This can be encouraged using financial incentives, celebration, coaching for stragglers, and a managed exit for those who cannot or will not adapt.

Chapter 5 (Alignment with project management) highlights that whilst project teams generally deliver change enablers (e.g. a new IT system), it is others that take these enablers and embed them into organisational culture. Thus the change life cycle is related to and analogous to the project life cycle, but distinct from it.

Conclusion

This book draws useful parallels between change management and project management whilst highlighting differences. The use of voices from people who have “been there” makes the advice real, and the liberal use of diagrams helps to explain the various concepts. At 152 pages this book takes <2 hours to read; with a RRP of £24.95 it is likely to pay for itself many times over with application of just a few principles. Recommended for project managers who want a better understanding of how their projects fit into the bigger picture.

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Author: Ken Burrell

Ken Burrell is a Programme and Portfolio Office (PMO) Professional, who through his company Pragmatic PMO makes targeted improvements to PMO practices to add value to Projects, Programmes and Portfolios. He provides senior management with the analysis they need to make decisions, and gives project and programme managers the support they need to deliver solutions.

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