There seems to be a popular belief – ‘Aim of every project is to deliver solutions’. This is the reason project managers are generally over the moon if the ‘Go-live’ is smooth. There are usually big parties post go-live to celebrate the great work done by the project team. The go-live dates are what the project managers live and die by. The reason being that on go-live date ‘the solution’ gets delivered and world is then a happy place. Here is what usually happens after the euphoria of the go-live is over

• Users slowly stop using the solution
• A relook at the solution vindicates the project team as there are no issues with the solution
• Still no one can figure out why the solution is not being adopted by users
• No one is sure who is responsible for users not adopting the solution
• Slowly the ROI equation starts looking wrong.
• While everyone waits for the ROI, business moves on and the solution starts getting outdated
• A new project is commissioned to implement a new solution

If you have ever been involved in any sort of transformation exercise, I am sure you have been through this cycle. Have you ever wondered why this keeps happening? Let me give you a clue – Our belief about what a project should deliver is misplaced.

Yes, a project is designed to deliver a solution but that is not why a project exists. A project always starts with a business case which invariably talks about benefits and ROI. That should be a big pointer towards why every project exists. The sole purpose of every project is to deliver benefits. You deliver solutions to eventually deliver benefits. A solution that is not going to be used is as good as useless. It is not good enough to deliver just solutions. The go-live parties are just premature celeration of success which might never be achieved. It is as good a sprinter celebrating at the starting line. We need to reach the finishing line or atleast close (if you are Usain Bolt) to start celebrating. That finish line is when we actually start delivering benefits.

Change Management is that bridge which takes a project from solutions to benefits and a bridge that most project manager forget to build. The popular belief that I laid out at the start of this post is the reason why. If you believe you are working towards delivering solutions, you are never going to bother much about delivering benefits. You will always see that as someone else’s problem. The funny thing is that ‘someone else’ just does not exist and it results in the post-delivery scenario that we just discussed

As I said earlier, it is not sufficient to deliver solutions, your solutions have to deliver benefits. Change Management will help your users actually utilise your solutions and get the benefits which you were looking to deliver. The choice is yours. You can choose to deliver solutions or move up the value chain and deliver benefits. I know what I would do !