The University of Cambodia Course: Project Management (BUS649)

THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBODIA

Project Management (BUS649)

The relationships between Organization Development,

Change Management, and Project Management

(Appox. 2900Words)

Lecturer: Samphear S. HOY, MBA

Group 3: LO Parinha (Mr.)

LONG Dalin (Ms.)

NUON ChheangEng (Mr.)

SAM Sophen (Mr.)

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Table of Contents

I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3
II. Organization Development (OD) .......................................................................................................... 4
1. Strategic Planning ............................................................................................................................. 5
2. Organization Assessments ................................................................................................................ 5
3. Leadership and Employee Development .......................................................................................... 5
4. HR Transformation ........................................................................................................................... 6
III. Change Management (CM) ................................................................................................................. 6
1. The Background of Change Management (CM) ............................................................................... 6
2. The Goal of Change management ..................................................................................................... 7
3. The right amount of change management and project management ................................................. 7
IV. Project Management (PM) .................................................................................................................. 8
1. Planning (Map out a project) ............................................................................................................ 8
2. Build-Up (How to get the project going?) ........................................................................................ 9
3. Implementation (How to execute the project?) ................................................................................. 9
4. Closeout (How to handle end matters?) ............................................................................................ 9
V. The Relationships & Connections....................................................................................................... 10
1. Relationship between Organization Development & Change Management ................................... 10
2. Relationship between Change Management and Project Management .......................................... 10
3. Relationship between Organization Development & Project Management.................................... 11
4. Relationship of the three elements .................................................................................................. 11
References .................................................................................................................................................. 12

Abbreviation
OD : Organization Development
CM : Change Management
PM : Project Management

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I. Introduction
Many of authors has considered OD as a term and a key organizational function. In this
paper, we will take a closer look at a concept that many have heard of but are unfamiliar with and
dive into what OD is, its goal, interventions and techniques, and process. By the end of this paper,
we will understand about the OD, and the techniques that can be used to improve organizational
effectiveness. Due to today business and globalization, many organizations face dynamic market
competitions and continuous technology advances, creating unique knowledge through innovation
that leads to organizational sustainability in the marketplace. This innovative knowledge
transforms into products and services that allow organizations to continue to grow and survive in
the business. Products and services are the end results or deliverables of the several project
initiatives of the organizations.

The paper also then discusses on the combination of OD, change management, and project
management to enhance project success and proposes such an integrated model. As we know that
both project management and change management support moving and organization from a
current state, through transition state to the desired future state (the new processes, systems,
organization structure or job roles). Mostly, the project management focus on the tasks which
project required but change management focus on the people impacted by the change.

In many organizations, change management and project management existed in only a

small portion of the business, which made it difficult for some projects to get total company
support. Change management engagement depends on the amount of disruption created in
individual employees’ day-to-day work. It also depends on the organization’s attributes, such as
culture, value system and history with past change. In addition, the rapid rate of change in both
technology and the marketplace had created enormous strains on existing organizational forms.

The traditional structure, which was highly bureaucratic, showed that it could not respond
rapidly enough to a changing environment. Thus, the traditional structure was replaced by project
management, or other temporary management structures, that were highly organic and could
respond very rapidly as situations developed inside and outside the company. The organic nature
of project management practices today allows project managers to customize the project
management tools and processes to adapt to a variety of different environments. However, the
acceptance of project management was not easy. Many executives were not willing to accept

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change and were inflexible when it came to adapting to a different environment and flexible
organizational structures. The project management approach required a departure from the
traditional business organizational form, which was basically vertical and which emphasized a
strong superior–subordinate relationship. Many executives had very strong beliefs as to how a
company should be run and refused to recognize or admit that project management could benefit
their company.

II. Organization Development (OD)

Organization development (from now on shall be written as OD) is the study on how to
continuously develop an organization. It involves continuous changing and quality performance
from everyone who is working in the organization (Organizational Development Theory, n.d.). It
is the study of practice on how can individual or group of individuals can solve organizational
problems.

Ultimately, it [Organization Development or OD] is all about

improving the effectiveness and performance of the organization for
sustainable, profitable growth and that is why you should care.”
(Blogger, Karen J, & Gregory, n.d.)

Organizational Development is connected with various other elements in the organization

mainly project management, human resource management, sociology, communication between
individual or group, and many other things (Blogger, Karen J, & Gregory, n.d.). An according to
OD Network, OD is an effort that is

• Planned

• Organizational-wide

• Managed from the top

• Increase organization effectiveness and health

• Through planned interventions in the organization’s “processes”, using behavioral-science

knowledge

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(What is organization development?, n.d.)

OD should always involve with these 4 management actions (Blogger, Karen J, & Gregory,
n.d.):

1. Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is the first action in OD. It is to set priority of the activities to be done
ahead. Or in another word, strategic planning is the process of setting up a schedule of what should
be done first and what should be done later depends on the level of the importance and/or urgency
of each set of activities (Vo, n.d.). The establishment of the schedule also depends on energy and
resources of an organization. Strategic planning can be a crucial tool to push all stakeholders and
employees to work toward united goals that organization is aiming for (Blogger, Karen J, &
Gregory, n.d.).

Whenever an organization can set a right strategic planning, it can act as a useful map for
what should be done in an organization for the present until future time and will lead to positive
organizational change or OD.

2. Organization Assessments

Organization assessment can be considered as a systematic process to investigate and

extract truthful information about all of the performance of an organization. On top of that, it can
also elaborate on the factors that negatively or positively influence those performance (Rojas, n.d.).
Unlike other evaluation such as individual performance evaluation, this one focus on the goals of
organization as a whole rather than specific performance of individual.

Organization is continuously going through change from time to time. Each and every
performance need to have slight adaptation to the change and environment. This is why it is very
important to always have organization assessment in a scheduled time manner.

3. Leadership and Employee Development

To have a development, the process of working must be kept improving. And for each
working process to be improved, there is a need of human resource improvement. This is why
leadership and employee development are necessary. In order to make this possible, organization
needs to provide opportunities to grow for workers. Organization should allow both front-end and

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management teams an appropriate set of time to develop their KSA – Skill, Knowledge, Attitude
(Townsell, 2013).

Improving skill can be done by giving new task or task rotation to the worker so that they
can learn about other area of skill in the organization. It is also beneficial as employees can enjoy
different set of tasks and come to realize what skills they are really good at. For knowledge
development, it can be done by providing seminar or learning opportunity for both employees and
management team so that they can absorb new theory and knowledge which might can be applied
for the organization. Lastly, for attitude, the organization can inject some soft skill training or
motivation to ensure that employees are having the right attitude when working in the organization
or even represent the organization to the public (Townsell, 2013).

4. HR Transformation

Lastly, OD is connected with HR Transformation. HR Transformation can refer to two

main parts: to keep improving human resources and maintaining them (Mercer, n.d.). The first 3
points are mostly about improving employee’s ability toward working in the organization.
However, the process should be done continuously and consistently. This is why OD needs HR
transformation to make sure that the task is consistent. Also, after development, organization also
want to make sure that employees or management team who are already trained can be kept and
maintained in the organization. On top of these two functions, HR transformation is also about
outsourcing external resources as well. All in all, it about how HR can help OD to change and
develop in a positive direction (Mercer, n.d.).

III. Change Management (CM)

1. The Background of Change Management (CM)

Change management is the process or tool and techniques to manage the people side of
change to achieve a required business outcome. Somehow change management is an important to
provide context related to two other concepts: the change itself and project management. As well
as, change management and project management are two critical disciplines that are applied to a
variety of organizational changes to improve the likelihood of success and return on investment.

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2. The Goal of Change management

When we introduce the change to the organization we ultimately going to be impacting on:
Processes, Systems, Organization structure, Job roles. The approaches and tools can use to improve
the organization, of all they ultimately prescribe adjustments on four parts of the organization
listed above. The change management incorporates, the organization tools that can be utilized to
help individuals make successful personal transition resulting in the adoption and realization of
change.

As we know that both project management and change management support moving and
organization from a current state, through transition state to the desired future state (the new
processes, systems, organization structure or job roles). Mostly, the project management focus on
the tasks which project required but change management focus on the people impacted by the
change.

Here is the change management process and tools:

Discipline Process Tools

➢ Planning for change ➢ Individual change model
Change ➢ Managing change ➢ Communications
management ➢ Reinforcing change ➢ Sponsorship
➢ Coaching
( from the Prosci’s ➢ Training
reasarch – based on ➢ Resistance management
methodology

The goal of change management is to help each individual impacted by the change to make
a successful transition, given what is required by the solution.

3. The right amount of change management and project management

These two disciplines (the project and change management) are tools used to support the
implementation of a variety of changes that we may be undertaking. Especially, the project
management and change management are not the same at least some, so these tools are best when
they are customized for the unique situation that they are facing. In the organization, the culture
and history are the specific change that we are implementing all influence that right amount of
project management and change management.

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Change management engagement depends on the amount of disruption created in

individual employees’ day-to-day work. It also depends on the organization’s attributes, such as
culture, value system and history with past change.

However, there is value in separating out the components. the three components separately
make it easier to definite and help other understand these distinct elements:

• Change: to improve the organization in same fashion, such as reducing cost, improving
revenues, solving problems, seizing opportunities, aligning work and strategy r streaming
information flow within the organization
• Project management: to develop a set of specific plans and actions to achieve “the
change” given time, cost and scope constraints and to utilize resources effectively
(managing the technical side of change)
• Change management: to apply a systematic approach for helping the individuals
impacting by “the change” be successful by building support, addressing resistance and
developing the required knowledge and ability to implement the change (managing the
people side of change).

IV. Project Management (PM)

According to Harold Kerzner, project management is the application of knowledge, skills,
and tools necessary to achieve the project’s requirements. The knowledge, skills, and tools are
usually grouped into activities or processes. From the studying on Harvard Business Review, each
projects both large or small need to go through the same four phases of project management:
planning, build-up, implementation, and closeout.

1. Planning (Map out a project)

Planning is really about defining what problem needs solving, who will be involved, and
what will be done. In the planning phase, we also need to determine scope, resources, and major
tasks. To avoid any problems in this phase we might use the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
tool, which aids in the process of determining scope and tasks and developing estimates. We have
to estimate how long it will take to complete these tasks and how much they will cost in terms of
the project will take.

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2. Build-Up (How to get the project going?)

In the build-up phase, you bring your team together. Time estimates become schedules.
Cost estimates become budgets. First task in this phase is to assess the skills needed for the project;
get the right people on board. This assessment flows directly from the WBS tool during the
planning phase, in which we developed our best estimate of the necessary tasks and activities like
plan assignments, create the schedule, hold a kickoff meeting, and develop a budget.

3. Implementation (How to execute the project?)

The implementation phase is often the most gratifying, because work actually gets done,
but it can also be the most frustrating. The details can be tedious and, at times, overwhelming. In
this phase, to maintain project perspective, monitor and control process and budget check-ups, can
help to measure the project progress. Stakeholders will generally want regular updates and status
reports, so if they are informed, they may turn out to be good resources when issues do arise. When
you’re immersed in project details, we may be focused by meeting once a week and periodically
asking what’s essential to the project’s success. The other hand in this phase is to pay attention on
managing problems. Some problems have such far-reaching consequences that they can threaten
the success of the entire project, but the most common are about time slippage, scope creep, quality
issues, and people problems.

4. Closeout (How to handle end matters?)

Before closing the project, we need to meet the goals or we also determine along with key
stakeholders, that those goals have been applied. We may do compare the project progress with
the scope set at the beginning. The steps you take to wrap things up will depend on whether your
team assumes ownership of its own deliverables, hands them off to others in the organization, or
must terminate the project altogether. If the project has gone as planned, it’s time for celebration.
Debrief with the team. No matter what the outcome, make sure you have scheduled a post-
evaluation—time to debrief and document the process so that the full benefits of lessons learned
can be shared. The post-evaluation is an opportunity for discovery, not for criticism and blame.
Team members who fear they’ll be punished for past problems may try to hide them rather than
help find better ways of handling them in the future.

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V. The Relationships & Connections

Although Organization Development (OD), Change Management, and Project
Management might seem to be different from each other, they are actually connected and have
strong relationship with each other. Below is the relationship between one element with one
another:

1. Relationship between Organization Development & Change Management

As we have understood above, OD is a continuous progress to make organization grow for

the better. When we talk about OD, it is not about one department or several areas in the
organization. It usually focuses on an organization as a whole. This is why to make OD happens,
it requires so many progresses from each and every department, division, or section of the
organization (Creasey, n.d.).

On the other hand, just like the title itself, Change Management (CM) simply focusing on
change. According to lead consultant from Tolero Solution, Scoot Span, CM is about
transformation of individual, group, team, or the whole organization from current state to a desire
state in a scheduled time period (Fadriga, 2016). Therefore, Change Management can either be a
small or big practice depends on the implementation and the process.

Thus, CM and OD has positive relationship with each other. This means that, when there
is a growth in CM, there will be a growth in OD as well and vice versa. However, CM focuses on
individual while OD focus on the whole organization. Thus, the combination of CM will make OD
happens.

2. Relationship between Change Management and Project Management

The relationship between Change Management (CM) and Project Management (PM) is
very obvious. According to Lucidchat, it stressed that:

Whereas project management focuses on the processes and activities

needed to complete a project (such as a new software application),
change management focuses on the people affected by those projects
(or other changes within the organization). (Lucidchart, n.d.)

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Project Management often focus on fulfilling the objective of the project. While focusing
too much on the achieving the objective, there will be some problems arise along the way. Most
of the time it is about the confusion and disagreement between individual or group of individuals.
When this happens, organization need CM to solve the problems. CM comes into place and solve
the disagreement and other dispute happen to make sure project can still run smoothly and in timely
manner. Therefore, CM can act as a side help when organization has PM to work on (Prosci, 2020).

3. Relationship between Organization Development & Project Management

Similar to other relationship we talked above, OD and PM also have positive relationship
to each other. While OD focuses on the result of whole organization, PM focuses on specific results
of specific project. The relationship can be considered as a cycle (Moravec, 1979). For instance,
when there are several positive results from OD, the standard working performance will be risen
in an organization. When that happen, employees tend to have better performance for the next
project they are working on which leads to better performance of PM. And when there is better
performance of PM, it will also provide overall positive result for OD as well. However, the result
is vice versa when there is any negative performance inserted in the cycle.

4. Relationship of the three elements

As we can see, each of these three elements all have positive results between each other in
all relationship. In fact, the relationship can be seen as this: Organization Development (OD) is
about the overall growth the organization, Project Management (PM) is about the growth of
specific project or task, and Change Management (CM) is a side help for both OD and PM,
especially PM.

Whenever one is on its way for growth, two others will also follow. On the other hand, if
one of them is heading for negative growth, the other two will also heading the same way.

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References
ASQ. (n.d.). What is Change Management? Retrieved from ASQ: https://asq.org/quality-
resources/change-management
Blogger, Karen J, & Gregory. (n.d.). What Organization Development is all about and why you should
care. Retrieved June 05, 2020, from HRSS Consulting Group:
https://hrssconsultinggroup.com/what-organization-development-is-all-about-and-why-you-
should-care/
Creasey, T. (n.d.). Exploring the relationship between OD and Change Management: Interview.
Retrieved June 07, 2020, from https://blog.prosci.com/exploring-od-and-change-management-
authors-interview
Fadriga, G. (2016, September 01). Organizational Development Vs. Change Management. Retrieved June
05, 2020, from LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/organizational-development-vs-
change-management-generoso-fadriga
Kotter, & John. (1996). Developing a Vision and Strategy. Leading Change.
Lucidchart. (n.d.). Understanding the difference between project management and change management.
Retrieved June 07, 2020, from Lucidchart: https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/project-change-
management#:~:text=Whereas%20project%20management%20focuses%20on,other%20changes
%20within%20the%20organization).
Mercer. (n.d.). HR transformation. Retrieved June 07, 2020, from Mercer: https://www.mercer.com/what-
we-do/workforce-and-careers/hr-transformation.html
Moravec. (1979, September). How organization development can help and hinder project managers.
Retrieved June 08, 2020, from Project Management Institute:
https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/organization-development-hinder-project-managers-5696
Organizational Development Theory. (n.d.). Retrieved June 05, 2020, from Health Behavior and Health
Education: https://www.med.upenn.edu/hbhe4/part4-ch15-organizational-development-
theory.shtml
Prosci. (2020, June 08). Integrating Change Management and Project Management. Retrieved from
Prosci: https://www.prosci.com/resources/articles/integrating-change-management-and-project-
management
Prosci. (n.d.). Definition of Change Management. Retrieved from Prosci:
https://www.prosci.com/resources/articles/change-management-definition
Rojas, K. (n.d.). Evaluating the Performance of an Organisation. Retrieved June 07, 2020, from Better
Evaluation:
https://www.betterevaluation.org/en/theme/organisational_performance#:~:text=An%20organisat
ional%20assessment%20is%20a,the%20primary%20unit%20of%20analysis.
Townsell, J. (2013, January 23). Developing an Effective Training and Development Program, Part 2:
Implementing KSAs. Retrieved June 09, 2020, from ESH Today:
https://www.ehstoday.com/training-and-engagement/article/21918544/developing-an-effective-
training-and-development-program-part-2-implementing-ksas

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Vo, E. (n.d.). What Is Strategic Planning? Retrieved June 07, 2020, from Small Biz Ahead:
https://sba.thehartford.com/business-management/what-is-strategic-
planning/#:~:text=Strategic%20planning%20is%20the%20process,ll%20use%20to%20reach%20
them.
What is organization development? (n.d.). Retrieved June 07, 2020, from Organizatiton Development
Network: https://www.odnetwork.org/page/WhatIsOD

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