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There have been so many times, when the coolest changes do not come true or come true but with less of an explosion or excitement. Why is it so? Why things that look super great on the paper and you feel inspired when people are describing it, do not give the expected outcome? There are few reasons of why change may become not successful. Not clear goal and what exactly team needs to achieve: there are so many situations, when everything is perfectly described on the paper, but at the end of the day many people still do not understand what is the output that everybody wants to achieve. And I am not talking about those slogans: be customer – centric or be more agile, I am rather talking about the part where those slogans are made into tangible results that company wants to have at the end of the day. For example: if you want to be more customer – centric – maybe you will setup a process that enables to answer the calls with less of waiting time or maybe product quality will be better and you will get less enquiries about something not working, if you want to be more agile, maybe you will automate testing or give bigger mandates to the certain levels of your organisation, so that they would not need to run to ask for permission every time. Whatever is the goal of the change, it needs to be described in a language that everybody understands and is measurable that everybody could see the difference. Lack of belief – this one very much depends on the part whether change and reasoning why it needs to take place is properly described. If it is just a slogan with no clear practical direction, many like to call it “tactical plans”, there is high chance that people wont believe it, therefor will not pay attention or effort to make it happen. Lack of focus – if organisation is running multiple changes at the same time and wants to succeed in all of them – there is a very little chance to make it happen if all those changes are not prioritised according to importance. People being peanut butter spread across everything that is going on, will not give any value or outcome neither to organisation nor to people, who are trying to pull out the result from all the things that they are in charge off. So to make sure that people are focused on the right things, put clear priorities. P.S. there is no such a thing like 5 priorities at the same time and in the same time frame – priorities need to be put from the angle of impatience and urgency. Lack of ownership – many organisations struggle with understanding of who is doing what. The root cause here is that there is lack of understanding of roles and responsibilities. Apart job descriptions there is hardly anything that you can find, where every role would be described with clear linkage to the areas of ownership. If that is not clearly done before the change kicks in, there is a risk that change implementation will take longer as change manager will be busy to find responsible people and most importantly making them act. Once you have described what you want to achieve from your change, indicate clearly who are the specific people participating in the change and what they will be in charge of. Not all or not correct stakeholders engaged - when it comes having the right stakeholders being engaged, it covers not only having people who make decisions, but as well stakeholders who are the best to advertise the change and stakeholders who make the job done. Before you go to the change implementation list down all stakeholders: a) who are needed for decision making, b) who will be the best people to sell it to the organisation, c) who’s teams will be involved. Final thoughts To make the change implemented only detailed plan of how you will do it, is not enough, it is important, that clear practical outputs are described, everybody knows what they are in charge of and what everybody expects from them, change has set priority so necessary focus would be kept.

If your career has brought you to the project management area and you feel that you know only that? And you feel that you want to step back from project management? What are the skills that you can use in other areas that would be valuable? Skills that project manager has Before we deep dive to the project management skill set, lets take a look what is the difference between coordination and management. When you are looking from the side, it may look that majority of the activities that project manager is doing in the project is actually coordination, by: organising meetings, calls, gatherings, etc. preparing meeting minutes collecting sign offs from the stakeholders tracking project plan and task list asking various outputs from different project counterparties following the processes and instructions filling out necessary templates with the team reporting project progress to the project steering group … And many other things that look like no brainier, if there are all instructions in place. How difficult is to follow the instructions? Right? Meanwhile there are so many things that project manager is doing while running the project, which separates him from coordinator and making him a manager, like: Stakeholder management: there is no instruction how to work with each and every stakeholder. Yes, there is a worldwide practice described, but there is no instruction in place of how to deal with every individual, who have different values, needs, expectations, ways of working, points of view of how things should be done, moods, stress levels, influence on the decisions, etc. Being a project manager you need to know how to identify all those different individual angles, so that you would get the necessary support for the project. This requires not only experience, but as well personal skills, like: empathy, charisma, analytical mind. Team management: project teams normally are setup from people who come from different departments, who have different KPIs and priorities set by their line managers and project manager is in charge to make this team work, though he has no legal power to give them orders. Good project manager listens and identifies project team members needs and desires that motivate them to act according to the project plan. Communication: if you are running a project that has an extensive impact to the organisation, well prepared and though through communication plan is a must. Only that project manager that understands his stakeholders and the team, will be able to prepare proper communication plan, that reaches the necessary results. Risk management: seeing all the unknowns. If person has been working as project manager that deep dives to the project scope and environment where it will be running, he is capable to foresee very different situations that project may encounter throughout the implementation period. Final thoughts A good project manager, who was managing projects, can fly very high in the career starting from different expert positions and ending with managerial roles. This is not only because of the experience formed via different projects, but because of the skills that can be developed through out the time in stakeholder and team management, communication. Obviously there are certain personal skills that every project manager should have to be successful in the field, like: empathy, charisma, analytical mind. To summarise skills used in project management are useful and forms foundation for many other positions.

Stakeholder management is a very wide theme and important part in any function in the organization: any tasks that you need to complete has an element of stakeholders that may be impacted, informed, asked to act on the topic, etc. Therefore it is important to understand who are your stakeholders, how make them believe in what your are proposing and make them support the idea. What kind of stakeholders may be? Normally you can categorize stakeholders to various different groups, like internal and external stakeholders. Then the ones who make decisions and the ones who are rather advisors. Another categorisation is according to the impact of a change or result that you want to achieve. Based on all these categories you address your actions and communication towards different stakeholder groups that would help you to achieve the target that you are after. But is it only angle to think about? How to approach different stakeholders to achieve results that you are seeking for? While thinking about stakeholders wise man advised me “people are making decisions and providing opinions, not representatives of an organization with no identity or personal thoughts or way how to get their consensus”, therefore it is worth to think about stakeholders as people who have their needs and different approaches based on how to make them happy so that needed decision or support would be provided. Same as in any relationship, there are different ways of how to reach the consensus between your stakeholders. 5 love languages in stakeholder management: Favors – some people operate in a way that if you want to make something done, you should show, that you will go an extra mile, for example: if you need to have 2 project outputs achieved like business case and business requirements which is a responsibility of a stakeholder that you need to work. If you will ask everything to be done by that person, you may get a pushback with a saying “you are dropping everything on me, what you gonna do?”. In these cases it may be easier to offer help rather than arguing why it is this persons job. The only slippery slow is that people may get used to that, so it is important to explain, that "because of common good i am here to help you, but please be aware next time, that this is something that you are in charge off". Advantage – here is important to present what will be the tangible value that the stakeholder will get: maybe he will need to spend less time on some tasks after your change is implemented, maybe it will allow to perform more sophisticated functions or it will allow the stakeholder to gain new skills that will set the scene for growth. Spotlight – maybe the stakeholder that you need to work with likes to be in a spotlight, this means that it may be important to have the stakeholder’s name named and visible as he being part of the process. Recognition - for some group of people it is important that their opinion is valued, recognized, they feel engaged and in control, which means without them no action will be taken. In these cases make sure that you mention that the reason you are approaching the stakeholder is because you value his opinion and that he will be approached if any changes to the action plan will appear. Common values – this love language is one of the most difficult, as while trying to make your stakeholder happy you need to appeal to his values, by painting the topic from the angle of which values will be addressed, for example: maybe your task will raise a better awareness and accountability about the money management in the organization, which is a concern for your stakeholder. Final thoughts Every stakeholder is a person who has his own needs and ways how he wants things to look like. While trying to achieve the consensus between your stakeholders try to understand what are the driving motivational factors for the stakeholder to give a support that you need for the topic to be implemented.

Many companies talk about leadership and this is something that they look for in every person, no matter what position you are in. Leader is someone that most of the time may look a bit mystified – as somebody that needs to have super powers, have ability to gather masses for the common goal, have a charisma and many other things that sometimes do not look achievable. What kind of leaders there might be in organisation? There may be different type of leaders in different organisations. Most common are the ones that have group of people as subordinates – team leaders – and the ones who are experts of certain areas of expertise, but have no people that report to them – area / functional leaders. How to be a good leader in an organisation? There are very simple things to work on and not forget, when it comes to being a leader of your own area or people. Area / functional leader should: Keep promises – if a person has given a promise to do something, promise should be fulfilled. If a person gave a promise, which he can not make happen, he must take responsibility without blaming anybody and come forward by saying that he could not keep the promise. The rule is a foundation for building thetrust in the organisation. Understand the area inside - out – this means simple thing – a person should know his area of expertise to very tiny detail, without any excuses “this is not my job”or “this part of the process is handled by somebody else”. Be proactive – no person that just waits for the problem to accure instead of acting in advance, will ever be considered as somebody who has sense of ownership, which is one of the important values of a good leader as well. Team leader should: Keep promises – same as with area / functional leader – given promises should be kept or worst case scenario team leader should come forward and share why something did not happen. The biggest difference is that to brake the promise given to the team by the leader will be more harmful, because commitment has been given to a very close circle of people, whom you can not hide or be dishonest with. Take care of the people – team leader should not talk only about the tasks and the progress of those tasks that the team is working on. There should be certain amount of time spend on talking of how team members are feeling, how is life, etc. – you just need to put some effort in getting to know your people. Take full responsibility for team failures – in public settings this means that team leader should not start blaming team members, but rather soften the situation, by saying “I understand where the team is coming from, let us talk offline and we will come back with a solution”. In the public you and your team should look as united front and all the mistakes should be addressed inside of the team. Listen – there are times when hard decisions need to be made, that not necessarily will make the team happy, but never the less should be made. In these cases team leader should give a chance for people to express their opinion, try to understand their fears and address the concerns in the best possible manner. Final thoughts As mysteriously the definition of a leader may sound in different trainings or slogans, the reality is that there are only handful amount of things that every person who wants to be a good leader in an organisation should do. Non of those things require any mystical powers, only certain attention to the details and the people.

Most of the time PMO is perceived as administrative function, that does not bring any value. This is because of the fact that visible part of what PMO team does is related with acting as a policeman, asking for various documents being filled, checking the quality, making sure that all governance steps are passed etc. Though in reality there is so much extra that is happening behind the scenes that helps organization to make the right decisions. What is the role of PMO? Project management office is responsible for making sure that projects follow set internal rules and regulations in the organization. Supports, onboards project managers in terms of project management processes and toolkit. Programs are normally constructed from projects or streams, so therefore Program management office oversees all program projects, its progress, maintains program plan and cross projects dependencies, sets governance and ways of working. Meanwhile Portfolio management office requires mature team, because this function has to understand portfolio dependencies, how portfolio content supports company strategy, helps with setting up a tactical plan to achieve company strategic goals, sets rules on how priorities will be setup and makes sure that prioritization takes place. Different companies need different type of PMO Level of PMO function depends on the state where company is: How many projects are running? How complexed projects are? Is there any project external drop – dead deadlines for company to meet? Are there and how long project management practices implemented? What is the practice of company staff management? What is the policy of company investments management? And many other questions, that are important while thinking what kind of PMO you need and how shall you run it. Where does the force of PMO come from? Most influential value that PMO brings to the table are elements of: Being able to link projects to company strategy Identifying whether proposed projects scope is supporting company strategy Challenging projects business value proposition Setting up rules of prioritization and maintaining them Understanding future backlog and acting proactively on it so no deadlines would be missed Understanding cross – projects dependencies and risks for the organization Standardizing project management practices No doubt, to make sure that all the functions listed above would be possible to reach, is super important that PMO is comprised of the team that has practical experience in project or program management, business development and actual passion to be in the role. Having team with the skills of how projects are managed and what is the market that company is in, brings valuable oversite and sanity check for the leadership. Worth to mention, even if primary PMO goal is process standardization, still this basic function brings lots of value as it would create more clarity of what, how and when needs to be done, which saves time, creates less stress for the organization and helps to manage organizational risk appetite. Final thoughts If your most immediate answer is “no” to the question “do you need PMO”, because it looks to you as an administrative function, first try to analyze what are the areas that your company struggles with when it comes to project management. There is lots of value that PMO can bring to the table, even if the first step is to standardize processes in project management, which will allow the team to focus on getting things done instead of running around and trying to clarify how to make things happen. And finally, PMO function starting point is project management process and once the function matures it goes to the level of understanding the bigger project portfolio picture in the company.

When an organization goes through a phase of major change it impacts its functions which then impacts the way people behave in the newly to be shaped environment. In every organization, changes occur that affect the way in which people operate and the functions they carry out. People’s needs in times of change are very different These changes can have a significant impact on the emotions and can even be the cause of anxiety of teams and individuals. When stability used to be the normal state, a phase of change resembles instability and uncertainty. Some people thrive in times of change (but everyone has a change appetite), others crave for harmony and balance. It requires a skilled leader to recognize individual needs, combining them into team requirements and guide the team through the phase of change. Typically, the period of scoping and preparation for these changes can take somewhere from a few weeks to a year. Such situations can be detrimental to team spirit and may ultimately affect team results due to the uncertainty. In the worst-case scenario, this may result in the loss of talent. One of the biggest challenges, however, is to ensure a transparent and continuous communication flow. As it is inevitable that there will be changes in leadership behaviors, decisions, and direction during this period, keeping it a secret from the individuals affected by the change is a major risk. How to approach change in an organization? Change management practices and leadership skills are crucial to put together an action plan for organizational change. There are several key steps to start the planning phase: Understand who will be impacted by the change and how. Anticipate the reaction and resistance of the teams impacted using a change-energy chart. Find out the root causes of resistance and/or anxiety before the change and keep track of it during the process. Assess the criticality of these teams to the organization's operations. Communication is key – How to draft a change communication plan A good communication plan includes several levels: Type of communication: meetings, 1:1s, posts in company intranet, external communication to customers and suppliers if affected by change. Communication channels: based on the channels used by the people affected by the change, communication needs to be tailored to these channels. Timing of communication: regular meetings, regular written communication, ad-hoc sessions, AMA (ask me anything) sessions with leadership board to keep in touch with people affected by the change. Communication style: this must be in line with corporate guidelines and tailored to the audience. This means the style of communication has to be adjusted to the respective individuals or teams in target. These questions can be used as a guide: Who is communicating? What is the audience’s main problem/issue/fear? When was the last time the target audience has heard/read something from me? Bringing everything together, add time frames to the content and style of your communication plan. Consider these three main phases and break them down: Before the change: Inform people of what is ahead of them. Once a change becomes common knowledge, be transparent and inform all people involved. Watch your communication style as mentioned above. During the change: Keep everyone in the loop. It can’t be stressed enough: transparency is essential! People are more likely to endure difficult situations when informed beforehand. People want to feel prepared and in charge. Including clear milestones, updates on the change progress help to form a picture of what is still ahead. After the change implementation: The change implementation stage is the beginning of the “refreezing” phase. Now leaders must show consistency and lead by example. The change is not over until the next one starts. Therefore, continuing the communication helps manifesting new behaviors and from a new mindset. Context –> Behavior –> Mindset Final Thoughts When preparing the communications plan, all the knowledge about the impacted teams and their key concerns should be incorporated. Each group should have a separate communication plan with different communication channels. More attention should be given to the most impacted and critical teams for the organization. It is important to include relevant people while the change is scoped and prepared to maintain important teams/employees in the organization and have their buy-in for the change implementation. There is a direct correlation between people's criticism of change and the amount of time they were involved in the process.

A project is an activity that has a very clear beginning and end. The project is about the fact that at the end of it a unique result must be achieved, a unique product or service must be created. Regardless of what result is achieved during the implementation of the project, the same initiation steps are most often applied to everyone. What is there worth to know about projects? Very often, projects are changes in products or the implementation of certain additional requirements that do not change the essence of the product or service, but configure or add additional functions, in this case a unique result is achieved, for this reason this activity can also be classified as a project. However, not all organizations will have only the criteria of beginning and end and uniqueness, often organizations have additional criteria to determine whether the planned change is a project, a program, or maybe just a small change. Those criteria may include: impact to the organization, meaning is there an impact to critical company processes investment size amount of impacted applications, processes, stakeholders, areas size of the team, that will have to work on the change amount of stakeholders amount of vendors if there are any ... and so on What are the key steps for project implementation? Project management in PMBOK is very widely described from all sides of project management cycles. Most of the steps depending on the maturity of the organization are also applied in practice. Some of the main steps to initiate projects are: in particular, many organizations are asked to think about new projects already a year ahead, when the organization plans its annual budget, goals, revenue growth, additional requirements from the government to carry out activities, etc. very often, if the project was not included in the annual plan of the organization, it can hardly be initiated due to the lack of various resources, such as: people, money, etc. however, if the project is planned in the annual plan of the organization, then in this case all projects at the time of their initiation must have artifacts: the business plan of the project, i.e. what benefits the project plans to achieve after the implementation of the project project scope: what changes are included and which will be untouchable business requirements: as - is and to to - be process after project is implemented list of stakeholders list of decision makers and finally, during the initiation of the project, a meeting is required, where all stakeholders, together with the project team, are introduced to the "rules of the game", i.e. how, when and to whom the progress of the project will be presented, what is the project team, what are the initial steps. Of course, it should be kept in mind that during the project initiation meeting it is mandatory to present what the project is being initiated about and what benefits are desired to be achieved.

Agile project management is currently a very popular method of change management in the field of information technology. One of the most frequently heard selling criteria as why Agile project management is the best methodology is that with this practice, the product is brought to the market faster. Briefly, what is Agile project management Agile project management is that the entire scope of the project is broken down into small parts, when installed, the end user can immediately use the provided functionality and feel its value. It is not uncommon for these cycles to be called iterations, sprints. It is important to mention that Agile project management is most often applied in software development projects. Agile project management consists of the following steps in the process: preparation and analysis of requirements, continuous improvement phase improvement, as well as: development, testing, installation and maintenance after the installation of the solution. All the phases of this process also exist in traditional project management, but the biggest benefit of applying the Agile project management methodology is that we implement the solution with small individual functionalities: it is much faster to notice errors in the requirements or in the whole process of development, testing and installation it is possible to get feedback from the end user faster due to the functionality provided, thereby changing priorities for the planned future functionalities Given the higher-named benefits, this approach certainly seems more beneficial to organizations while implementing change, but can Agile project management be applied to all cases? What are the main criteria's while applying Agile project management ? one of the main criteria, but very often forgotten, is that people working on the management of Agile projects must be self-organized, understand their function in the context of the Agile project team and be very disciplined, i.e. In the case of the Agile project team , each team member is dependent on the other, so if a team member chooses not to complete a task for one reason or another, the whole team suffers from this another important criteria is that when working in Agile project management, dedicated teams must be established according to the defined areas - their composition must be able to cover and perform all the steps taking place in the Agile project management cycle finally, Agile project management can only be applied in cases where the final product can be divided into logical iterations, at the end of which functionality is implemented that can be used by the end user. If this is not the case, then this method of implementing the change will not bring added value to the organization. In this case, traditional project management can also be applied, since the final result of the entire decision would be achieved at the same time as Agile, but this would be a complete solution at once that the end user could take.

What is strategic management? What value does this very often time-consuming process create? These are frequently enough asked questions, trying to understand how much time should be invested in the implementation of strategic management methodologies in the organization. Strategy management and types Depending on the organization and its area of operation, there may be several options for managing the strategy from the point of view of duration, i.e. how far ahead the organization plans. The types are as follows: a long-term strategy and a short-term strategy. Short-term strategy - if the organization operates in a very rapidly changing environment, the organization can plan only a year ahead and prepare a specific action plan only for the next quarter. In this case, it would be the planning of a short-term strategy. Long-term strategy - meanwhile, an organization operating in a more stable environment can plan from 3 to 5 years ahead and lay out a detailed plan of action for the next 6-12 months. A 3-5-year strategy is usually called a long-term strategy. What is the importance of strategy management for the success of organization? Strategic management is a tool that helps an organization plan for the future and clearly communicate the goals set for the rest of the organization, set expectations of what results the organization expects from its community. Other very important elements that strategic management gives an opportunity to understand: where organization is currently where organization wants to be what are the ways of how organization will try to seek it's goals how and when organization will measure it's progress as per set targets how organization employees will be motivated to seek company strategic targets In conclusion, the goal of strategic management is not only to identify, agree and monitor the agreed short-term and long-term goals, but also to provide more transparency to the employees of the organization, where the organization is moving towards and whether they want to be a part of it.

An organization's strategy is an important documet that every organization must have in one form or another. In each organization, the strategy must define where the organization is located and where it wants to be in the short and long term. Strategy management in an organization must also address weaknesses and strengths of the organization. When trying to measure what weaknesses and strengths will hold organization back or help to achieve strategic goals, one of the tools to achieve this is business consulting, which provides an opportunity to evaluate those factors that perhaps people inside the organization may not notice. What is strategy development? Strategic management takes place in a very similar way to project management, which consists of analysis, planning, etc. The development of the strategy consists of the steps named below: analyzes the current situation of the organization analyzes how the market is changing and what forecasts are made taking into account the obtained results of the analysis, it is analyzed to which market changes the organization, according to its current status, can react and to which market changes it will not be able to respond to according to the identified weaknesses and strengths, decides what future options, how quickly they are achieved and how much they could cost after identifying possible scenarios, the organization makes a decision which path it wants to take, taking into account the financial, existing competencies and other possibilities of the organization When the development of an organization's strategy is carried out, what benefits does business consulting create? When an organization's strategy is developed, it is not uncommon for teams providing business consutations to be used. Why is this welcome? Organizations that provide business advice are usually a very good help in assessing whether the way the organization works can achieve the goals it wants to achieve. Or the way the organization's activities are arranged is the most optimal way for it to function in order to achieve the best results. And a lot of other insights can be provided during business consultations, because the teams providing business advice have the opportunity to distance themselves from the activities taking place in the organization and give an independent opinion.

In all projects you will hear such a formation as the Project steering group. This formation is very much important for the success of each project. What would it be worth for pie project management teams to know? What is project management steering group? Project management defines not only all stages of projects, but decision-making in a project. One of the key decision-makers is the project management steering group. This group of people is formed for each project separately. And its composition is always different. What project steering group should consist from? The project management steering group must have the power of decision and a huge influence on the success of the project, which can be divided into 4 groups: those who have the power of decision on the financing of the project those who have decision-making power over the people assigned to the project those who will be strongly affected by the change implemented by the project those who are interested in the success or failure of the project and can influence it What are the decisions which can be made by project steering group? Very often, the golden rule is forgotten that a project management steering group can make decisions only within the limits of a project, that is, only within the framework of a fixed budget, agreed duration and a defined scope. All decisions that are related to the extension and sometimes shortening of the duration of the project, if this means that the scope of the project is changing, or changes in the project budget and an increase or decrease in volume, are not taken by the members of the project management steering group. In such situations, the project management steering group plays only an advisory role and the final decision is made by the organization's higher resolving forums, which have the visibility of how one or another change in the project will affect the organization and other projects taking place in the organization. What should you know about project steering group? One of the most common recommendations is that the project management steering group must meet at least once a month or at least once every two weeks. The project manager for this forum must take advantage of the project: a) discuss the project status b) discuss issues the project is facing c) ask for advice and help when project is in trouble or in a crossroad.

Depending which area you look at, change management can be treated differently: say, in the field of information technology (IT), change management is associated with the introduction of small and large IT changes in a productive environment, while from the side of human behavior, the management of changes is characterized using the Kubler - Ross change curve. What are the most important steps in managing an organizational change? Before we start talking about the steps of managing changes in an organization, it is important to mention that, if in any change that is desired to be implemented there is at least a drop of changes that affect the organization as a whole, its culture, behavior, must change attitudes, it means that the change will not be from the easiest. So, when it comes to managing changes in the organization, some of the most important steps are really related to the people in the organization: identify the most sensitive group of people in the organization who can react most to the change after identifying this group of people, try to pay more attention to them, trying to understand their fears, for which they do not believe or do not want to implement the change in the organization try to include them as much as possible in the implementation of change so that people feel part of the change plan appropriate communication channels based on how different departments or teams are affected by changes in the planned organization. The most common mistake is that everyone communicates the same way and through the same channels, thus making the message anonymous and may not reach part of the audience The main rule of change management in an organization: to understand what kind of people, how they will be affected and what kind of reaction people can have to the change depending on the environment in the organization.