Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
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Results<br />
infrastructure, the organization, <strong>and</strong> the management system. IT had<br />
become increasingly important <strong>for</strong> Bureau in its core <strong>activities</strong> <strong>and</strong><br />
administration, but the existing system was considered too complex,<br />
decentralized, <strong>and</strong> costly. As an example, there were hundreds of different<br />
IT systems <strong>and</strong> programs in use across the Bureau’s units. With the change<br />
program, Bureau sought a more centralized, flexible, <strong>and</strong> cost-effective IT<br />
solution. From the many units of Bureau, the IT unit <strong>and</strong> one department<br />
within the headquarters were the most active in the program. However,<br />
more than 500 employees participated in the program, <strong>and</strong> the results were<br />
planned to affect practically all of Bureau’s thous<strong>and</strong>s of employees. An<br />
internal change program of this magnitude had never be<strong>for</strong>e been<br />
implemented in Bureau. The planned program duration was eight years,<br />
from which initiation <strong>and</strong> planning took about three years.<br />
Program initiation can be traced back to a specific event. A large IT<br />
company approached the government ministry which was <strong>for</strong>mally in<br />
charge of Bureau’s operations <strong>and</strong> made an offer to take over Bureau’s IT<br />
management. As there were pressures to rationalize public sector<br />
operations, this was an attractive offer <strong>for</strong> the ministry. However, not all of<br />
Bureau’s managers agreed. The CEO of Bureau discussed the offer with a<br />
manager working closely with IT management, the future program<br />
manager, <strong>and</strong> they agreed that the offer was unrealistic <strong>and</strong> it was not in the<br />
best interests of Bureau. Still, they saw this as an opportunity to start<br />
developing Bureau’s IT management. As the soon-to-be program manager<br />
stated, they wanted to exploit the momentum created by the IT company’s<br />
offer.<br />
To assure the decision makers in the ministry that the external offer by<br />
the IT company should be declined, Bureau’s CEO appointed the soon-to-be<br />
program manager to come up with an alternative plan. With some help<br />
from a colleague, the program manager outlined a solution by synthesizing<br />
the ideas that had been discussed during the past few years about how to<br />
develop Bureau’s IT management. The CEO <strong>and</strong> the ministry’s decision<br />
makers accepted the plan <strong>and</strong> decided to proceed with the idea. The<br />
program manager was officially appointed to lead the emerging program.<br />
For the next month, the program manager elaborated the plans, <strong>and</strong> after<br />
the initial solutions were outlined, he hired a consultancy company to<br />
support the initiation process. Two months after the initial meeting the first<br />
phase of the program was officially launched.<br />
The first phase, the analysis of the current state, was led by the program<br />
manager <strong>and</strong> a few other experts in Bureau. With the help from the external<br />
consultants, they introduced a workshop-based method <strong>for</strong> collecting <strong>and</strong><br />
analyzing data on the current state of Bureau’s IT management. Employees<br />
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