Project Management is a set of methods, knowledge, skills, and tools to develop, create, and improve a product with signs of uniqueness. This creative activity is designed to implement the project with the maximum possible efficiency and under certain restrictions on time, money, and resources and the quality of the result of the project. Change Management is a well-structured approach, a strategy for transferring individuals, teams, and organizations from the current state to the desired future state. This organizational process helps expand and improve employees’ opportunities to accept changes in their current business environment (Cartlidge, 2020). Thus, these management disciplines are necessary when implementing a project or initiative.
Companies must look for new ways to solve emerging problems and set tasks in a constantly changing external environment. ‘Project’ and ‘change’ management are necessary when planning and implementing technological changes and upgrades for the following causes. Effective project management allows chiefs to control competently, receive a set of funds to achieve strategic goals, and ensure resource allocation. Implementing the change management process allows leaders to minimize the problems that arise because of unsuccessful changes, leading to service failures. The option of “inaction” is not viable since the normal functioning of the infrastructure requires periodic modifications. It is necessary to implement ‘alteration’ management to control these actions and avoid catastrophic consequences (Aziz & Curlee, 2017). Therefore, both types of management adhere to an integrated approach to implementing the strategy and mitigating the impact of the project results on employees, saving them from unnecessary stress and fears.
Moreover, understanding these two processes is essential for outstanding leadership for the following reasons. For example, comprehension in project management helps chiefs make employees more efficient, and the project management process is more productive, convenient, and transparent to the outside view. Familiarity with the basics will give a significant advantage over competitors due to improved organizational skills and competent interaction with the team, making plans, and solving problems. Besides, change management will allow one to control the organization’s development process and adjust the project’s progress for the introduction of innovations. Thanks to successful methods, people will be motivated to start working in a new way and change their usual methods (Jeston, 2018). In that way, these two processes help leaders in implementing all the tasks set by the project and ensuring the use of standard methods and procedures for the productive and timely processing of changes.
Project managers control the product development process and demonstrate its functionality, versions, and prototypes to clients. They ensure the implementation of the project with the available resources, distribute the load and funds, and represent the result. Besides, ‘administrators’ monitor compliance with deadlines and thereby influence employees’ actions to comply with quality standards, avoiding customer dissatisfaction. In addition, managers are responsible for maintaining reports on a specific project, records every detail and event so that everything does not cause questions (Wager, 2017). Therefore, such people are the organizers of the work processes’ smooth operation and the link between teams and customers.
Obviously, successful project managers possess outstanding personal qualities, characteristics, and skillsets. For instance, chiefs are good communicators and negotiators, can attract people and rally them into a single team. Such moments require leadership qualities, sociability, stress resistance, and the ability to work with people. It is also necessary to have a competent and expressive speech, the skill of a clear and precise presentation of thoughts. In addition, leaders in this field are responsible for the performance duties, have organization, flexibility, and high efficiency. Project managers can see the whole picture and make informed decisions. They are focused on the result, achieve the plan even in adverse conditions. Moreover, an ‘administrator’ should understand IT and information management processes and manage different functional areas as the project’s subject area, deliveries and contracts, time parameters and changes, quality, risks, and financing (Wager et al., 2017). Accordingly, managers combine a set of universal qualities and specific knowledge necessary for effective work.
Undoubtedly, the following problems may arise between project management and change management. For instance, integrating two types of controls into one common system can have several consequences – inconsistency of employees’ actions, a project’s goals, a resources’ competition, and the failure of deadlines. Firstly, in connection with the transition to a different strategy and back, conflict situations and differences of opinion may arise, leading to the weak interaction. Indeed, everyone can have disagreements in their judgments, and it is still necessary to approach this problem competently and carefully. Secondly, sometimes the company’s employees in the hustle and bustle due to excessive attention to detail may miss the most crucial things – the project’s strategies, plans, goals, and objectives. Thirdly, it may often seem that the project resources are competing when many elements are available simultaneously. Fourth, all the above points, such as limited resources, unclear goals, misunderstandings of employees – all these problems in project management slow down work and can eventually lead to a failure of deadlines (Roberts, 2020). Consequently, project management at the company-wide level with various methods is not an easy and precise task.
References
Aziz, E. E., & Curlee, W. (2017). How successful organizations implement change: Integrating organizational change management and project management to deliver strategic value. Project Management Institute.
Cartlidge, D. (2020). Construction project manager’s pocket book (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Jeston, J. (2018). Business process management: Practical guidelines to successful implementations. Taylor & Francis.
Roberts, P. (2020). The economist guide to change and project management: Getting it right and achieving lasting benefit. Profile.
Wager, K.A., Lee, F. W., & Glaser, J. P. (2017). Health care information systems: A practical approach for health care management (4th ed.). Jossey-Bass.