Comments on Change Management

In Micheal Specht's blog post Change Management and Technology Implementation he discussed how change management has been one of the most underrated and overlooked components during technology implementation

In my experiences, I have seen organisations time and time again look for short term $$$ savings by cutting project costs through reduced investment in project and change management.

This sort of skimping on leads to the following situations:
1. Poor scoping of the project
2. Mis-alignment of expectation for key users and stakeholders

The results are generally the same… Poor technology adoption, heavy re-work and sometimes re-implementation.

It is important that Change Management and in particular how the system/technology will impact users must be considered way before the first product is installed. Technologists left to their own devices will continue to implement solutions and products that meet project deadlines on the surface but not achieve the business objective, users expectations and more critically provide a positive ROI.

Without supplementing technology adoption projects early with disciplines around project and change management Technology (particularly large IT lead) projects are doomed to fail.