Relevance of scope management and organizational change management in IT deployment projects

Abstract

This research investigates the relevance of project scope management and organizational change management in the context of IT deployment projects in which new IT artifacts are introduced in organizations. Scope management refers to the management of project content, whereas organizational change management refers to communicating, justifying and leading the change delivered by the project to the organization receiving the new IT artifacts. Deployment refers to the process of “taking the artifacts into use”, involving both emergent and planned changes. This research provides new insights for both aspiring and current deployment project managers who need to understand better the characteristics of deployment projects, the motivations of project managers, and the most important success factors of deployment projects as those differ from software development projects and from other types of projects.

This research answers the following research question: Should project managers focus more on scope management processes than change management processes to reach deployment success? The author has identified these two critical processes through his extensive empirical experience in IT deployment projects. A conceptual literature study has then been used to deepen the understanding of the critical concepts. Finally, theme interviewing of IT deployment experts has been deployed to obtain relevant data in order to ensure that any personal biases of the researcher do not confound the results.

According to this research, IT deployment project professionals (1) value organizational change management more than scope management and (2) aim at reaching product success, not project success. The project success factors and criteria generally found to be of utmost importance to scope management do not seem to apply to IT deployment projects. Generalization of the findings should be done with care through further research.