Project and Change Management

Introduction

The World Bank expects about 25 to 30% of all money spent in the World to be spent on projects. The popularity of ‘doing work by projects’ is often attributed to the versatility of projects as a mechanism for turning ideas into reality. In other words: to bring about change. A project is a temporary organization embedded in a wider and more permanent organization, which simultaneously prioritizes, selects, plans, and executes many projects, as well as coordinates among them. How is that done? Which units and roles are needed for this and how is it all coordinated? How are projects managed, and how are they embedded in the larger permanent organization? How are project-based initiatives leveraged for organizational change? These questions are addressed through the concept of Organizational Project Management (OPM) and Change management, which are parallelly practiced in this course by understanding both theoretically through OPM and change management theory, as well as practically by observing organizational reality.

Course content

Day 1:
Organizational change, planning organizational change, resistance to change.

Day 2:
Implementing change through projects, and introduction of project management. Casework.

Day 3:
Plannning, scheduling, governing, and business integration of projects and OPM governance. Group presentation.

Day 4:
Organizational OPM approaches and philosophies. Case-based game. Exam.

Two to three of the teaching hours in this course are dedicated to CSR, ethics, social and environmental issues.