Did you know that nearly two-thirds of business-improvement initiatives fail to fulfill their promise? Studies have shown this is the case for a number of years. The amount of money that is being spent without yielding the results that are expected is just scary. Project management is part of a business improvement initiative, but it’s only part of a much larger continuum. That continuum starts with an idea and ends when the full value of that idea is brought to fruition.

There are really three major roles and sections to this whole idea of an improvement initiative. On one end, you have business analysis. Then there’s project management, and then there’s organizational change. Let me talk about all three of these for a moment. First, business analysis starts with, I’ve got an idea. Now typically, when you go from the I’ve got an idea, you do what’s called an as-is analysis. What’s happening in the business today? How are those processes working, or in some cases not working? From that, you go to a to be exercise. What could this process be? How can we improve it? How it ultimately, the business be more efficient, more effective, expand their market share.

Whatever the case may be in this to-be analysis. From the to-be analysis, we then get to the project management. They take that to-be analysis and say, okay, we’re going to have new business processors. We’re going to build new tools. We’re going to change the nature of roads. We’re going to build a new you know, we’re going to drill a new oil well. Whatever, whatever it is that, that, that project consists of takes that to be environment and it ultimately creates a set of deliverables. Now, those deliverables have to be incorporated into the day to day business.

And that’s where organizational change then enters into the picture. Organizational change is part training. It could be cultural change. It could be changing people’s performance management exercise. Whatever the case may be, it’s taking those deliverables or the catalyst for business value, and ultimately making sure that you get the full business value that is envisioned in the idea on this end, out of in this end. It’s a very, very concentrated people process to ultimately say we’re going to make sure that people’s day to day approach to business and the day to day habits that they have are going to change because they are going to use these deliberals, deliverables effectively and efficiently to bring that value to bear.