Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti

Results
Q42 (Center, top manager): ”The current managers of the program apparently
feel that they would have needed more guidance, more work and guidelines
from the management group. But as a management group member myself I can
say that all other programs, good programs, do that work themselves: they
create plans and then get them accepted. It cannot be so that you just sit still for
1.5 years, wondering why the top management does not provide you with the
instructions…”
During the second round of interviews, the program should already have
been in implementation, but it still could not demonstrate viability. The
perceived lack of readiness of Center’s program is in line with the decision
to terminate the program prematurely, which was made a few months after
the second round of interviews. Although there had been some advances
and some small-scale effects stemming from the program, Center’s change
program was concluded to be more or less a failure.
In terms of readiness for change program implementation, case Bureau
showed a very different story. Firstly, the program seemed to have acquired
a shared intent, at least for the most part. Early program initiation activities
in Bureau had aimed at providing rationale for the change through a
systematic current state analysis. This phase was largely considered
successful, resulting in a shared understanding of the need for change: all
seemed to agree that Bureau’s current IT management was outdated and
required renewal. The participative approach of the second phase of
program planning, implemented as a series of workshops, had also resulted
in a high-level vision for the program, which was shared at least by those
involved in planning. People seemed to have a common view of the purpose
and main goals of the program. The general planning phase resulted in an
overall plan for the program. One of the interviewees described the
situation in the following way:
Q43 (Bureau, manager of a central unit involved in the program): “There are still
some issues, even major ones, to solve, but the program’s main principles, goals
and plans have been commonly accepted.”
After the centralized planning phase, more detailed planning was left to the
project teams. Key actors of different projects had varying views about
whether the level of detail during the general planning had been sufficient
and whether the instructions and guidelines given to the project teams had
been specific enough. As a result, some projects were unable to come up
with detailed plans in the original schedule. The following quote describes
the situation:
Q44 (Bureau, manager of a central unit involved in the program): “It would have
been better if the projects had been able to concretize their plans in more detail.
It would have made the follow-up easier and also decreased the number of
142