Professor Tim Brady from the Brighton Business School was one of the two keynote speakers at the Great Change Debate, organised by the APM Enabling Change SIG. The presentation is entitled "Change management: science fiction or fantasy?"

1. Change Management:
Science Fiction
or Fantasy
Prof. Tim Brady
University of
Brighton
The Great Change Debate
APM Enabling Change SIG
March 5th 2015

4. Marine installations at Brighton Marina

6. Renovating Georgian buildings on
Marine Parade

7. Retail developments in Newhaven
Town Centre

8. The Early Academic Research (1980 – 1988 )
implications of
technological
change for skills and
employment and
training policy
microelectronics,
new materials

9. The ICT Years (1988-1994)
the structure and
dynamics of software
activities
doctoral research on
make or buy decisions
for business software
the strategic use of
information systems

10. The CoPS Years (1994-2006)
EPSRC and ESRC funded
research on innovation
in firms producing
complex products and
systems
Member of EPSRC
“Rethinking Project
Management” network

11. The Complex Project Years (2006 - )
Heathrow Terminal 5
Biodiesel plant development
projects
London Olympics programmes

12. Innovation or change?

13. Innovation?
the Latin word
innovare
means
‘to make something new’

14. “Essentially,
we are
talking
about
change”

15. “the process of
turning new
ideas into
reality and
gaining value
from them”

16. Organizational Change?

17. “the movement over time
from an ongoing present
to an emerging and
uncertain future that is
sometimes planned and
managed with the
intention of securing
anticipated and
sometimes unplanned for
and unforeseen
objectives”

18. What is a project?

19. “a combination of human and
non-human resources pulled
together into a temporary
organization to achieve a
specified purpose”
Cleland and Kerner, 1985

20. the Latin word
Projectio
pro - from a place
iacio – to throw
‘throwing forward’

21. Projects are the vehicle for a whole
range of tasks
achieving organizational change
development of new products and
services
process improvement
implementation of IT and production
technologies
mergers and acquisitions

22. But…..
projects remain poorly
understood and are
bedevilled by poor
performance

27. Why do projects fail?

28. “Projects exhibit high failure rates
because senior managers and
project teams underestimate, up
front, the extent of uncertainty and
complexity involved in their
projects and fail to adapt their
management style to the
situation.”
Source: Shenhar and Dvir, 2007 Reinventing Project Management, Harvard
Business School, Boston MA.)

30. “Science fiction involves that which
general opinion regards as possible
under the right circumstances.
Fantasy involves that which general
opinion regards as impossible.”
Source: The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings
by Philip K. Dick (edited and with an Introduction by Lawrence Sutin), Vantage, 1995

31. The fantasy of project
management
• Project management textbooks suggest once the
client has handed over their well-defined problem,
projects simply manifest means-end reasoning
through a staged process from project initiation,
through planning and design, then execution and
finally completion.
• Project management tools and techniques have
tended to assume that project managers deal with
quantifiable risks, or when they deal with
uncertainties the “risks” involved are somehow out
there, waiting to be discovered

32. The reality of project
management practice
In the real world, high quality project managers are
men and women who have judgement and experience
to manage conflicting stakeholders’ aims and
objectives and act effectively in the face of a constant
stream of problems some predictable, some
unpredictable
i.e. they have to deal with a rather messy reality that
becomes increasingly messy as projects become
larger, more software intensive and more political

33. “Insanity is doing
the same thing
over and over
again and
expecting
different results”
Albert Einstein

34. Atlas launch 1958 Polaris test launch 1959

35. Back to the 1950s

36. Engineers created systems engineering
Managers created project management
Dealing with complexity

37. the design and development of
systems
engineers, physicists and ‘rocket
scientists’ worked together in a multi-
disciplinary design team
emphasis on meeting technical
specifications
Systems Engineering

38. development of new tools and
techniques and new organisations to
manage the system development process
and to deal with external stakeholders
emphasis on meeting cost and schedule
constraints
Project Management

39. Two approaches to
complex
development
projects
Page 39
See Klein, B.H. and Meckling, W. (1958), “Application of
operations research to development decisions”, Operations
Research, Vol. 6, pp. 352-63

40. Mr Optimizer
systematically analyses and compares all
the alternative promising final systems
makes estimates about the performance
all the subsystems and components
might achieve by the target date
matches these alternatives to a detailed
model of the future operating
environment
then,according to some criteria for
choosing the most efficient system
among the alternatives, a choice is made
which end-product is best

41. Mr Skeptic
refuses to define what is optimal
at an early stage
contracts for several prototypes
to be developed in the overall
programme
maintains flexibility by
committing resources to the
development in stages, constantly
reviewing
enables learning to take place
which allow better decision-
making at later stages

42. Klein & Meckling’s findings
If Mr Optimizer’s assumptions (guess) about
performance of the single choice prove correct
then certainly that solution will be more efficient
But if they turn out wrong then there are serious
consequences in terms of inferior quality, major
cost escalation and schedule overruns
Mr Skeptic’s strategy is often the most efficient

43. In the 1960s the focus gradually
changed to one of optimizing the
cost/performance ratio.
Page 43

44. Page 44

45. Back to the 2000s

53. Into the future

54. • the world is not predictable
• plans will need to be changed
• budgets need to be realistic
• flexibility needs to be built in
• collaboration is required
Reality rather than fantasy
Demands an innovative approach

55. The hybrid skeptic/optimiser model
Strong Client leadership and involvement
Strong governance – assurance and reporting
Collaborative working – integrated teams
Flexibility – ability to have different contracting
approaches in sub-projects according to the
situation
Adaptability – ability to respond to changes
Learning

56. The Optic Model of Project Success
Strong
Client
Strong
gover-
nance
Collab-
orative
working
Flexi-
bility
Adapt-
ability
Learn-
ing

57. “It ought to be remembered that there is
nothing more difficult to take in hand, more
perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its
success, than to take the lead in the
introduction of a new order of things…….
..…. because the innovator has for enemies all
those who have done well under the old
conditions, and luke warm defenders among
those who may do well under the new."
Machievelli

58. This presentation was delivered
at an APM event
To find out more about
upcoming events please visit our
website www.apm.org.uk/events