Change management is a critical requirement for project management

Many project managers sadly joke that the planning process is greatly overrated, because no matter how detailed a project is planned, many changes occur from the very first day, often leading to radical adjustments to the plan. In this joke, as in any other, there is only a grain of joke - changes, indeed, accompany both small projects and megaprojects from the very beginning. This is absolutely natural, because any project is a complex entity with many stakeholders, processes, events, relationships, etc. Many organizations understand this and include the need to include a change management process in internal standards, however, there are often cases when the effectiveness of this process leaves much to be desired.
Indeed, companies often have and continue to implement some change management steps - sometimes as part of general project management requirements, sometimes as recommendations. But at the same time, the process is often inefficient (especially in megaprojects, where a huge number of people are involved and there are also a lot of changes). This happens due to many reasons, of which I would like to highlight a few of the most common.

1. Failure of employees to comply with the existing methodology

This problem concerns not only change management, but the isolation of the methodology from life in general. Unfortunately, we regularly see how, despite the presence of weighty volumes of written and approved methodology (on some megaprojects I had to see literally entire rooms littered with methodological documentation), a company lives according to concepts. Regulations and procedures are no more than a demonstration of compliance with the formal requirements for the development of such documents. At the same time, management often also does not use the methodology and does not monitor its implementation by subordinates.

2. Deliberate misleading of management by employees (most often due to fear)

Some of the changes that occur significantly affect the project parameters. Often, enterprises have an established corporate culture where employees are confident that after notifying management about such changes, they (these employees) will be punished (deprived of bonuses, deprived of the opportunity for promotion, and sometimes even fired). As a result, changes are hushed up, accumulated, and everything ends in a serious "explosion" - when it is no longer possible to hide the real situation. On megaprojects, such silences can lead to gigantic losses of benefits (incomparably greater than the costs of timely change management).

3. Constant escalation of decisions to management (due to reluctance to make decisions)

The corporate culture described in the previous paragraph can have another side effect: due to the fear of making independent decisions on any changes (even minor ones), employees prefer to escalate all issues to management. As a result, a huge number of issues accumulate at the highest level of management that could be resolved by less senior employees. You can imagine how many such questions the manager of a megaproject can accumulate (by the way, this is one of the reasons for the "flight meetings" that last 4-5 hours). In such a situation, it becomes difficult for managers to determine priorities for prompt resolution of change issues. For example, I saw how at the change committee the CEO personally considered the issue of replacing office chairs (from one type to another). The higher the manager, the more valuable his time is, and it is the timely resolution of issues at lower levels (within the scope of authority) that can free up this time to resolve issues on truly serious changes.

These are just a few of the main reasons why companies have an ineffective change management process (even if there are strict project management requirements). The following are priority recommendations for rectifying the situation:

1. Description of the change management process built into a complete project management methodology.

No matter how skeptical many may be about numerous methodological documents, without developed, agreed upon and approved "rules of the game" it is impossible to effectively build organization and project management processes. A methodology is necessary, and the change management process must be an integral part of it, linked to other processes.
In order to avoid the risk of constant escalation, it is necessary to establish the boundaries of areas of responsibility for making decisions on changes at all levels of management (criteria may include the impact of changes on the budget or project timelines). Moreover, it is important to emphasize that, within the established framework, the employee not only has the right, but is obliged to make a decision without burdening higher levels with inappropriate escalation.
The methodology also needs to provide for the formation of a collegial body responsible for reviewing and making decisions on key changes. In some organizations and megaprojects, such functions are performed at meetings of existing company management bodies.

It is important to develop and regularly update a change register indicating the initiator of the change, the potential consequences, the level of decision making, the status of decisions and the consequences of the change that occurred. If you have such a document, it will always be possible to restore the entire history of changes, and this, in turn, will not allow you to avoid responsibility for the consequences of changes (both positive - bonuses, other types of motivation, and negative).

2. Monitoring the implementation of the developed methodology.

Any, even the most well-written methodology, in the absence of execution discipline, can turn into useless sheets of paper. And any performance discipline begins with the attitude of management (both the project or megaproject, and the company as a whole). If management is interested in the execution of the process and makes this clear to employees, the chances of using the methodology effectively are much greater. If managers lose interest in the topic, then gradually their subordinates also stop fulfilling the requirements.
It is also important that the description of the process is up to date. To do this, it is necessary to regularly conduct audits that identify, on the one hand, cases of non-compliance, and on the other hand, opportunities for adjusting processes to improve their efficiency.

CONCLUSION

Changes in a project are inevitable, so it is necessary to first work out and communicate to the project team the procedure for managing changes and carefully monitor its implementation. This is the only way to prevent loss of control over project management and, as a result, an increase in the likelihood of failure.