An IT project is a business change project

I just read an article by Jed Simms identifying that every project is a change project and should be managed as such.

What does this mean? Many of the business owners that I talk to are not interested in technology and don't want to have to deal with it. They aren't comfortable with it, despite the fact that it surrounds us. The reason is that much of the technology is hard to deal with. Software is developed by software programmers for software programmers. It isn't developed for normal people. So it's not hard to understand why business people don't want to have to deal with it.

The problem lies with the fact that when we change technology, we are changing the business. Our business processes are affected, therefore our daily work is affected. Our business lives are changed (or why did we do it?). We were looking for improvements, we were looking for change. When we change business software or even the underlying technology (like Vista), we are changing our daily activities. We do much of our daily work without thinking about it. When our subconscious takes over, we get much more efficient. However, when faced with change in our daily work, we have to start thinking about it. We have to learn these new ways of doing things. This slows us down tremendously. We become less productive.

In many cases, the change can feel overwhelming. There is so much to learn and we still have our normal work to do. What do we spend our time on? How do we prioritize? Since we can't get our work done in the normal time, we start to get stressed. We often revert to the way we used to do it, or find some other shortcut. These shortcuts are not always useful from the perspective of the new technology or software. This causes numerous problems.

As a business owner, you don't need to focus on this technology. You need to focus on the change in your business. How will your business be changed? What is the most important thing for your staff to learn about this new software? How do you get them to be productive more quickly?

This is what a change project is all about. This is why every business owner needs to be aware of the business impact. This is why any IT project needs to be dealt with as a business change project.