Difficulties in Project Implementation

Change management could be one of the "missed" management technique in project management. Rationalising the role of change management in projects, it serves to provide a path of least resistance to project realisation.

This real story is in Indonesia. Abundant with vast plantation land, Indonesia has become home to oil palm producers to invest and expand plantations. Getting to the operation station located at the centre of a plantation, one has to endure about 40kms of muddy terrain, because there are no proper roads. Forget about telephone lines, one has to use a satellite phone to contact the station.
Upgrading or installing new hardware and software to ease control and transactions at the stations are difficult, and with 80 stations in remote locations spread out in the Indonesian isle, one can imagine the scale of difficulties in rolling out new IT or IS implementations, especially when simultaneous implementation and switch-over are required.

However, this is least of the problems. The locals - the plantation workers being a threat to the project implementation. One case has it that the operation clerk installed a new payroll application software to replace the old software, under the instruction of headquarters. The next day after the payrolls had been released to the workers, they come arming with weapons, demanding an explanation why they are getting less money than before. Apparently the new payroll software calculates using a different system, and this alarms the workers. The clerk panicked and reinstalled the old software, and issued the payroll again in an effort to appease the workers.

When the officers from headquarters visited the operation station, they were surprised that the new software was not used. The clerk just refused to let them install the new software, for fearing for his life.
The issue here is the lack of change management process in the project management cycle in anticipation of such difficulties, like in this case a reluctance to change. It is not an easy matter to deal with, but one can start "testing" or simulating the effects of a project implementation before going major. Educating, rationalising, and being transparent can be techniques working in our favour to win the trust of the implementors and endusers.