Symbiosis of change and project management

Abstract

In the last few decades, the value of project management was a bit misunderstood. Weáve got to a point where we label as project management different processes or activities that are actually not in this field. Projects can be really different in terms of their scale, their funding, and it really depends on what happens within their corporate framework. We can safely assume that the success of a project rests on how well it is prepared, how receptive are the ones who try to achieve it, and how positive or negative is the attitude towards the specific project. A lot of times these properties are more important, than the actual professional competence of the worker, employee, or manager. In this article, I would like to investigate the necessities and needs of change management in relation to project management, since in practice these too cannot exist without each other's logical background.

If we look back 10-15 years in the past, in the operation of big companies changing to new IT systems and computers was great challenge management wise. And change happened under the umbrella of project management. How did this actually happen?

The CEOs of the companies had big expectations regarding the use of computers instead of human-centered work. They wanted shorter intervals between the ordering and payment processes, a decrease of the administrational staff, or better customer service. However to implement these technologies they needed to link the introduction of IT systems to a wide range of organizational changes (Bingi – Sharma – Godla, 1999). Although the employees of the companies looked at this conversion in a bad way, they felt that this is an obstacle to their daily work habits or as a restriction to it. At this point, we can see how the management of change is as equally important as the project itself.