Change Management Process Within a Project. Provide

¶ … change management process within a project. Provide two specific reasons why having a structured change management process will improve the chances of success for a project. In at least 200 words, provide a comprehensive answer using your reading, knowledge and experience. Every project must ultimately be implemented by human beings and serve human beings -- and yet, by nature, human beings are change-resistant. Change management is an important way to ensure that the change 'sticks' by creating buy-in for the change.

Conveying a sense of urgency and the need for change is a vital component of enhancing change receptivity. People may use the excuse that they cannot handle the change to ensure that it does not work. "Just as the state of 'unconscious incompetence', needs to be developed into 'conscious competence' to provide a basis for training, so a person's subjective emotion needs to be developed into objectivity before beginning to help them handle change. None of us is immune from subjectivity, ignorance or denial.

The lessons and reminders found in stories and analogies can help to show a new clear perspective" (Chapman 2013). Once the change has been instituted, proactive measures must be undertaken to ensure that the change is not blocked. Creating a coalition for change and maintaining the 'buy in' takes teamwork -- change cannot occur alone and there must be a coherent and systematic vision for the change.

Change is often best conceptualized in a series of stages, which allows people to celebrate small milestones rather than to regard the change as a failure because it does not occur instantaneously. Finally, at each stage measures must be taken to ensure the change is monitored and it becomes part of the organization's standard operating procedures and there is no backsliding. Q2. State the importance of identifying risks and categorizing them as high, medium or low probability.

Explain why risks associated with the critical path of the project need special attention. Risk management and risk anticipation is a critical component of project management, given even small delays can cause the project to go over-time and over-budget. Ideally, there should be contingency plans at every juncture of the project to allow for the risks that can occur and to plan for them.

"If a risk materializes that you had not identified you are strictly in a reactionary mode and most likely not prepared to deal with the circumstances and have a limited number of options" (Brown 2013). On the other hand, it is impossible to plan for every possible risk. Risks must be identified and prioritized based upon their likelihood of occurring and their chances of critically and materially affecting the project.

The most serious risks are those which pose a challenge to aspects of the project that cannot go forward unless a specific benchmark is met, which means that a delay is inevitable if this aspect.