Free Management Role in Major IT Initiatives Essay Sample
Due to competitiveness of today's business environment, organizations are forced to embrace change especially in the Information Technology sphere. Organizational change is most often linked to trying to improve the organizations effectiveness and profitability. The change should be accompanied by leadership commitment form the top and the energy should be trickled down to the employees in a systematic manner. All stakeholders in the organization should also be trained to understand the variables involved and ample time should be provided for the transition.
A vision should also be set out from the beginning. The vision will give details of what is anticipated of the change in a specific period of time in the future. The vision will enable the group to focus on the change program.
There are various types of organizational change which include incremental change, fundamental change, radical change and step-shift change.
Project Management is defined as carefully planning, organizing and implementing a project in order to successfully accomplish the project. A is a deliberate effort to accomplish a specific goal over a specific period of time.
Project management involves setting up a project plan. Features of a project plan include establishing project objectives and goals, setting tasks and strategies of how the objectives will be achieved, identifying the needed resources and drawing budgets and a timetable for the implementation of the project. Also included in the project management process is the management of the actual project plan and ensuring the schedule is adhered to. In this stage suitable checks and controls are put into place to monitor the progress of the project. Every stage of the project has to have control measures and a corrective action where necessary.
The implementation of a project takes on various major stages which include undertaking a feasibility study, defining the project plan, project planning, project implementation, monitoring and evaluation and corrective actions. Project management involves appropriately established plans, tasks and roles, charters and committees.
Reasons for Failure
Research has it that two out of every three organizational changes are not successful and this leads to huge costs in time resources and money to a company. Some reasons for failure of change programs include:
Lack of commitment by top management: For any organizational change to be effective, senior management should be on the forefront in advocating for the change and providing vital resources for the success of the initiative.
Lack of incentives: Change initiatives should be accompanied with rewards to employees who adopt the change positively and faster. These rewards will include promotion and pay increases and other incentives. This will encourage other employees to take up the change initiative.
Change overload. The change program should be arranged simultaneously to avoid confusion caused by trying to do too much at the same time. The initiative should follow well defined steps to maintain and promote confidence on the process.
Lack of training: Some organizations put little or no emphasis on trying to promote employee skills to go with the new change initiative and for the new technology to push through. Employees need the training experience to take on the new procedures and processes. This should be complimented by the physical environment around the company.
Steps to minimize project failure
Change should start from the top and leadership role is crucial in every step of the project implementation. Secondly, communication on the stages of the project and the progress of the project is crucial to mitigate any failure symptoms and also to motivate the stakeholders of the change to go on with the project. Employees should also be trained on the various aspects of the project prior to the implementation of the project.