This week, between accidentally deleting 900 users from a small European country, preparing dinner for a colleague from India and packing my stuff to go to the Isle of Wight (not on business – hurrah!), I found some time to research a chapter for my book on change management. I came across Bill Duncan’s interesting article ‘Ignorance is Risk’. It challenges some of the assumptions we have about what project management is and how it works. The thing that really struck me was his belief that changes are a good thing.
I hate change, which is ironic given the job I do. Change management is a pain – lots of paperwork for the audit trail, plenty of people to talk to and politics to manage, not to mention throwing your carefully planned professional life upside down – but actually it means the person who requested the change still cares about the project. They want it to deliver something useful, something that they want to be a success. They care about quality and they intend to do something with the end result instead of just let you get on and deliver an IT system or whatever that will never be used.
So let’s celebrate changes! Personally I know I’d rather have a group of stakeholders who are interested even if they make changes all the time than a steering committee present in spirirt only. There looks like some big changes on the horizon for one of my projects… watch this space.
