Project to plan for significant process change

THE previous column introduced this series focused on projects with the mandate to put in place significant changes to the processes currently used by the organization. While it is certainly possible to ask one project team, within a single project, to plan for the change, implement it, and follow up afterwards to determine the success, it will be more productive to examine the stages individually. We will do that by establishing separate projects for the stages of the process change. The intention in this column is to discuss projects with the mandate to plan for a significant process change. Two examples were described, one in a volunteer organization and the other in a company which has been operating for a few years, with the culture and processes slowly changing over time. These will be used as examples to illustrate the suggestions which can help to make such a project successful.