Change Management v. Project Management

We have been seeing a lot of debate about Change Management versus Project Management recently, with some commentators suggesting these are two entirely separate disciplines and another using the metaphor that the project manager builds the boat and the change manager makes sure everyone is on board (we have paraphrased that post).

Whilst it might be true that you can be a project manager or a change manager, these do not have to be mutually exclusive.

Your project might be to deliver a new building, or new infrastructure or a new system. Whatever that project is, helping the operators take over (to get on board) and use that new asset is part of a project manager’s job.

As a professional project manager, could you be remiss if you fail to consider the “getting on board” part? If you just deliver the asset without a thought for the transition and operationalisation (a terrible term, we know), then are you really doing right by the client? Yet often, this service might not have been called for (or paid for) in the brief, so what are you to do?

We have written elsewhere (on sustainability and digitalisation in particular) that when a client or a brief doesn’t ask for a particular service, as professionals we have a duty to point out to the client the “art of the possible” and provide more than the “minimum viable product”. Give your client an understanding of the full suite of options and the benefits they will bring. The change management part of project management should be no different. You know it needs to be considered through the project delivery process, so you should at least ask your client how they plan to manage this aspect.

Change is hard at any time, and organisational change is incredibly so. Whether the client appoints you the project manager, or internal client resources, or a separate change manager to lead this, your responsibility as a project manager is to communicate, incorporate and manage this within your project.

Project Management at its worst will ignore Change Management, and at its best will encourage, embrace and include it.