Integrated Change Management: The Primary Success Driver for Combined Project and It Management in Various Industries

When a ＄145 million IT project failure pushes Los Angeles to the edge of financial meltdown, the County CEO asks Max McLellan, a harried IT project manager, aka The Integrator, for help. The County Board gives Max 30 days to identify the problem and find a solution. At first Max finds the usual missteps, but something bigger and darker beckons, an explosive source of project failure. He must do something different, rattling ghosts of previous County IT failures, uncloaking crookedness, and exposing truths that shatter careers.

With some people rooting for his failure, Max battles to fit all the pieces together with the County team, applying his proven framework to define the problem, plan a solution and execute it successfully.

It’s common knowledge that barely 50% of IT projects succeed, per a 2017 Project Management Institute report. Equally well-known, approximately 70% of large-scale change management initiatives fail according to a 2017 McKinsey & Co. report. Given the challenge to overcome these low success rates, The Integrator offers a proven narrative on the organizational change framework for achieving Agile IT project management success based on the author’s 45+ year client experiences and published research.

The Integrator defines change management as the single overarching methodology integrating Agile IT and project management. It does this because all projects are about change - significant organizational and personal change. The people involved - their participation in and understanding and support of these changes - ultimately determine IT projects success or failure. In fact, while all IT projects are about change, successful projects change human behavior.

The methodologies included in the framework, described in The Integrator, include:

- Change management as defined by AIM (Accelerating Implementation Methodology).

- Project management as defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI) Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) standard.

- IT management as derived from the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEEE) Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) standard.

- Agile as defined by the Agile Alliance’s Agile Manifesto.

Written by a certified Project Management Professional and accredited change management practitioner, The Integrator chronicles the challenges involved in applying this framework in a real-world setting to achieve successful project implementation.

Scott Coplan is both a change and project manager, educator, author and speaker on industry successful practices. In 1991, he founded COPLAN AND COMPANY to focus on improving lives with IT project management. With over 40 years of experience, Scott successfully manages IT projects that transform or radically change the way clients deliver services to people in need. This includes providing integrated change and project management services involving planning, acquisition, transformation, implementation, quality assurance, and optimization.

Formerly with Deloitte & Touche and Booz Allen and Hamilton, Scott holds an MPA from the University of Washington and a BA from Beloit College, and is a Project Management Professional (PMP(R)), Certified Professional in Healthcare Information Management Systems (CPHIMS), and Accredited Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM). practitioner. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society, Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) and Project Management Institute (PMI).

He is also a member and Fellow with the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). Scott co-authored the book Project Management for Healthcare Information Technology, with David Masuda, M.D., McGraw-Hill, 2011, currently used as a college and university textbook on project management throughout North America. Scott and David also co-authored a study indicating our integrated change management methodology increases the likelihood of IT project success. This study, Redefining Health IT Project Success, appeared in the Spring 2012 peer-reviewed Journal of Healthcare Information Management (JHIM).