On Unspecified Change Management

Change management is everywhere.

When speaking with IT guys, this process is to protect the production systems from untested changes. When talking with MBA graduates, they consider the change management to be about organization change. For legal people, what counts are the contract clauses and schedules, which describe the change management process of the overall contract. And in the end, there is project change management, which describes what level of scope changes project management can accept, and at which level steering committee approval will be required

The problem is when a project change causes a change in the code that will go to the production systems. In this case, we involve two change management processes, and probably two approval mechanisms! The project change can also result in a need to trigger contract change management process, which is even more complicated. But an organizational change initiative (“mother of all changes”) can also experience a change in its scope, so the project change management will be required also here – a kind of “change of the change”.

Project and program managers need be aware of all these change management processes and to know when they are triggered. And I think we need to start using some adjectives to be more clear what change management we speak about.

Sasha Lazarevic
November 2010