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Chapter 8 • Program and Project Management 235

The respondents rated their current skill level in the areas of personal communications and project
management considerably below the level that they believed to be important to industry. 8

Change Management
Change management is another critical factor that must be addressed by the project manager (i.e.,
managing change). Communication and training are the keys to a successful change management
effort. It is normal for people to resist change and have a fear of the unknown. The project manager
must have the skills to empathize with the affected employees, realizing many of them might have
been doing their job in the same fashion for many years. It is up to the project manager to communi-
cate the importance and significance of the project to the entire organization, top to bottom. There is
no better way to calm a user’s fears than to implement an aggressive training program. “Nothing eases
a team’s apprehension when starting a new project better than knowing they will be trained in what
9
they have to do.” It pays to get these same users in the fold early. The project manager should make
sure that their issues and needs are taken into consideration along with those of the organization. Let
the team share in the ownership of the system, and it will provide for a smoother changeover.

Implementation Team and Executive Team
The program manager and the project manager are critical to a successful ERP implementation, but there
are other groups that are also critical to that success. One of those groups is the implementation team.
There are typically three options in choosing an implementation team: the internal IT organization, con-
10
sulting organizations, and the package software vendors’ client professional service group. A critical
element in choosing what combination of the three will be used largely depends on what type of
resources the organization has within its own walls and how quickly the implementation must take place.
It is a common edict in today’s fast-paced environment that the sooner a solution is rolled out to a
11
business, the faster a company will begin to see a return on investment. It is unusual to find internal IT
personnel who are up to speed on all the intricacies of the ERP, so relying solely on internal IT personnel
will slow down the implementation process. Outside consultants have the experience of doing prior
implementations at other organizations working in their favor, so they understand what has and has not
worked in those other implementations. They are unbiased because they neither work for the software
package vendor nor for the organization implementing the ERP solution. Finally, the vendor’s client
professionals bridge the gap between the internal IT personnel and the outside consultants. They have all
the up-to-date information on the software package and can help explain the software’s latest enhance-
ments. It is essential that consultants are well integrated with the internal IT personnel in order to realize
the benefits of knowledge transfer. This ensures that once the project is over and the consultants are gone,
the internal IT personnel have absorbed all the necessary information to operate independently.
What role does the executive management branch of the organization play in a successful
ERP implementation? Executive management support and commitment throughout the project is
essential. Executive management can also assist with the change management process, especially

8 Hawking, P., and Stein, A. E-skills: Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Hawaii International Conference on System
Sciences (HICSS’03). The Next hurdle for ERP implementations, School of Information Systems. Melbourne, VIC:
Victoria University of Technology.
9 Strub, J. A. (February 2003). Top 10 Reasons for Having a Project Kickoff. www.technology-evaluation.com/
Research/ResearchHighlights/ERP/2003/02/research_notes/prn_MI_ER_PJ_02_24_03_1.asp (accessed May 1, 2005).
10 Bhuta, V. (April 30, 2001). Eight Mantras to a Successful Software Implementation. www.gantthead.com/article.
cfm?ID=18833 (accessed May 1, 2005).
11 Ibid.