Introducing new EPPM tools into your company’s workflows requires planning from both the technical and the people sides. In this blog, we provide insights and best practices for using change management for a smooth transition.
As organizations expand their digital transformation efforts, enterprise portfolio and project management (EPPM) capabilities and tools become important. By centralizing and standardizing data and processes as well as reducing variation in planned versus actual costs, EPPM tools and capabilities support significant improvements in on-time and on-budget delivery.
Realizing these benefits typically requires a major, enterprise-wide initiative to modify planning, scheduling and costing processes and implement new EPPM applications and tools. While the technical aspects of this type of transformation are challenging, we find the organizational change management (OCM) or human aspects of EPPM transformation to be equally, if not more, critical to successful results.
This blog will focus on five change management pitfalls and how to avoid them. Along the way, we’ll provide some best practices to help you maximize your effectiveness.
1. Starting OCM Activities Late (or Not at All)
Although most of our clients no longer make this mistake, we still see change management activities and deliverables reduced, eliminated or delayed in a mistaken effort to lower the cost of implementation. Doing so inevitably results in delays and cost overruns on the back end. Recent global research by Ernst & Young found that “Organisations that put humans at the centre of their transformation journey are 2.6 times more likely to be successful than those that do not (73% chance of success versus only 28%).” This is consistent with our experience. We subscribe to the axiom, “You can’t separate project management and change management.”
A few best practices to avoid this pitfall include:
- Involve advanced OCM practitioners in the early stages of the EPPM planning, design and build stages of the technical effort to identify the impact on targeted employee groups and to size the scope of the OCM effort to support go-live.
- Identify and communicate with the change champion network that will support the EPPM implementation effort. These individuals are typically in division or business unit change and communications roles, and you can use them to extend OCM efforts deep into the organization.
- Assess your organization’s experience with managing change. When you understand the organization’s change history (successes and failures), it enables you to target change readiness assessments for impacted areas and better inform OCM plans.
2. Not Having an Interested and Engaged Executive Sponsor
An executive sponsor might give you the green light to find a new EPPM tool and the funding you need to get it. But often, leadership sees an EPPM tool as exclusively for PMO and project manager (PM) use. An executive does not see the decision as something that impacts them directly.
In reality, developers built most modern EPPM tools for collaboration and use across the organization. Executives will directly interface with and consume information from the solution.
A few best practices to avoid this pitfall include:
- Ensure executives and key stakeholders from across the organization understand an EPPM tool’s use cases, features and benefits. Emphasize the “what’s in it for me” or the WIIFM. Overcome the impression that this is only an application for PMs to make Gantt charts and track task completion – those days are over!
- Involve executives and other key stakeholders in the vendor interview and selection process. Invite them to product demos. Understand which features are important to them, and use their input in weighing selection factors.
3. Managing EPPM Resistance by Avoiding It
Implementing a new EPPM tool is never as easy as flipping a switch and watching everybody dump their old tools in favor of something new. In many cases, organizations use spreadsheets in lieu of an EPPM tool. In these situations, introducing an EPPM tool requires an emphasis on training with the new tool.
Another potentially difficult scenario is when various siloed teams already use a patchwork of EPPM tools. Bringing all your teams onto a common platform has many advantages (better cross-team communication, cost savings, easier vendor relationship management and more). However, getting teams to give up or steer away from a familiar tool (they may love using) can require careful resistance management. Too often, companies make exceptions for individual teams to let them continue to use the tool they are accustomed to, greatly diminishing the benefits of a better alternative.
A few best practices to avoid this pitfall include:
- Take time to understand your stakeholders’ processes and how they use their current tool(s).
- Involve affected teams in the selection process. Get them engaged and excited about some of the efficiencies they stand to gain.
- Offer reassurance that you will provide time and resources to make the switch. Consider working with consultants to alleviate the technical components of a change and using outside resources to craft and execute a tailored training program.
4. Not Redesigning EPPM Roles
New EPPM applications offer the opportunity to significantly improve scheduling and costing processes and functions. This improvement includes changes in job roles and responsibilities and how scheduler and costing resources perform their jobs. Successful job redesign is core to realizing the full benefits of new EPPM processes and tools. Equally as important, expanded and more desirable job roles and responsibilities will improve adoption.
As an example, we had a recent client recognize they no longer needed to spend half their time locating and aggregating data in their current costing and scheduling roles when they could make this data centralized and easily accessible in the future state with their new EPPM application. Instead, they recognized they could combine these roles and cross-train employees to perform each job. In addition, they have the potential to transform each role to deliver business analytics, scenario planning and forecasting functions with their freed-up time.
A few best practices to avoid this pitfall include:
- Develop a detailed change impact analysis to identify changes from the current state to the future state (“from – to” analysis and “stop, start, continue” analysis) to identify job role combinations and cross-training opportunities.
- Identify current state best practices and deliverables you can expand in the future state and extend to all roles in the future state.
- Emphasize future state job redesign as an outcome of future state process redesign.
5. Emphasizing Technical Training over Analytical or Financial and Power Skill Training
Organizations implement new EPPM processes and tools to significantly improve portfolio and program performance, including nimbly responding to ever-changing customer demands. New EPPM technical capabilities also allow you the flexibility to respond to changes in internal organizational priorities, such as shifting from portfolio profitability to top-line revenue targets.
Although EPPM tools provide the technical ability to quickly modify scenarios and shift plans, companies often limit the business and finance acumen to take advantage of the tools to a few individuals. We have seen organizations make the mistake of training only on the technical features and functions of the new EPPM tools.
Instead, we recommend emphasizing business and financial acumen training to ensure employees use the new tools to deliver optimum results.
A few best practices to avoid this pitfall include:
- Conduct a thorough business-and-financial-acumen-training-needs assessment for impacted stakeholder groups.
- Design technical tool training skills in the context of improved scenario planning and other identified planning skills.
- Include development of Power Skills, as defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI) in their Pulse of the Profession 2023 report, which identified collaborative leadership, communication, problem solving and strategic thinking as the four highest-ranked power skills.
Conclusion
Implementing new enterprise portfolio and project management capabilities and tools is a major organizational undertaking that significantly impacts all planning, scheduling and costing roles. The high degree of impact on how individuals perform their current roles, and more importantly, how they can potentially improve their individual contributions, requires well-defined and executed organizational change management support. Addressing the five pitfalls above will improve the probability of successful EPPM tool implementation.
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