Project managers as great change agents (1)

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we have been waiting for, we are the change that we seek” – Barack Obama 

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything” – George Bernard Shaw 

“The world as we have created it is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed if we don’t change our thinking” – Albert Einstein 

Change as defined by dictionary.com is the act or process through which something or a situation becomes slightly different, transformed, radically different, modified, remodelled or replaced, most of the time for the better. Change is the movement out of a current state through a transition process to a future state. Change happens every day and everywhere and it can be externally or internally motivated or driven to achieve a desired objective. Coming back to Lagos after about a 15-year hiatus, I found out that almost everything had changed from the way I left them. I could not believe the rate at which Lagos had evolved. The change has been monumental. The concept of change is universal and its very nature is a movement from one position to another.

Government departments, businesses and organisations embark on the change process for various reasons. For the government, it is about development and trying to make the lives of the people better by improving their standard of living. Businesses and organisations do it to achieve different strategic objectives and business goals. Changes come in various forms and dimensions for government departments, organisations and businesses. Almost all of these desired changes are initiated through projects and other initiatives. These projects for the most part are classified as Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC), Information Technology (IT) or Development projects across all sectors of the economy.

Over the years businesses and government departments have sought out ways to improve on their change implementation strategies and project delivery capabilities. This has led them to seek out seasoned and knowledgeable professionals to handle and manage and complete these projects at the shortest possible time and at the least cost. These tested and experienced professionals are otherwise called project managers or directors.

Project and project management

A project, according to Project Management Institute (PMI), can be defined as a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. It is temporary in that it has a defined beginning and an end in time, scope and resources. A project is unique as it is not a routine operation but a specific and a distinct range of work to be performed and designed to accomplish a singular or a set of objectives. Project management depends on strong skills in analysis, planning and organisation, and rigorous attention to detail and processes that ensure tasks are performed on schedule. Project/programme management can also be described as the application of knowledge, expertise, tools and techniques to achieve set project goals and objectives. Project management has always been in existence, albeit informally, but it has only just been practised as a distinct profession since the mid 1940s and early 1950s.

There is a universal set of five processes projects in every industry have to go through for them to have been deemed to be successfully completed. The five processes are as follows: initiating; planning; executing; monitoring and control; and closing. How these processes are followed and used can be different from industry to industry. What obtains in the manufacturing industry might be different from the construction or the aviation industry.

The notion that the concept of project management is unnecessary and dispensable is very prevalent in the Nigerian business and government landscape. This might be due to the fact that not much is known about its importance and advantages or that a lot of company executives and senior government officials are used to the unregulated and uncontrolled approaches to implementing programmes and individual projects. Project management is seen as an arduous task of meandering through needless loops and layers within an organisation on the way to successful execution of projects. This thinking is short-sighted and has led to numerous abandoned, uncompleted and failed projects culminating in avoidable loss and wastage of funds and scarce resources.

The worth and importance of the art and science of project management to an organisation’s strategic goals cannot be over-emphasised. Very stiff global competition amongst businesses and government agencies worldwide has made it imperative for these organisations to turn to project management principles in order to have an edge and consistently achieve outstanding results and meet business goals. Moreover, business enterprises and organisations are continually re-engineering their business portfolios trying to link all that they do to their strategic missions and objectives. These activities include analysing, standardising and improving business and work processes. Also there is need to avoid spending funds that will not guarantee desired returns on investment due to poor project planning, execution, monitoring and control.

Leading corporations, government agencies and departments all over the world have over the years welcomed total cost management and project management as a way to cut pork barrel projects and reduce spending, control risks and generally meet their business objectives and developmental goals. It is even more so in these times of economic downturn and hard times. With oil revenues plummeting by the day, available resources need to be judiciously allocated and spent.

Ayodele Akingbade