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

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also commonly acknowledged, paving the way for the radical change
program. Since the original goal had been set by the top management by
merely defining a figure for the desired cost savings, there had been
complaints about the lack of clear goals and a picture of the end state. On
the other hand, the following quote from Chain’s program coordinator from
the first round of interviews describes how the lack of clear goals largely
related to the general nature of programs:
Q48 (Chain, program coordinator (future program manager)): ”It is difficult to
communicate to some people that in a program the end state may not be fully
clear, but it gets clearer along the way when decisions are made. Especially in
the early days people seemed to have a remarkable need for a “big picture” that
we are aiming at … And we still don’t have that, and we don’t need that either;
we are moving forward and we still iterate over these goals. … You can still find
people who would say that this program is not under control, since we don’t
have clear goals; that we lack the big picture and thus cannot do anything.”
By the second round of interviews, Chain’s program seemed to have found
its direction and most interviewees found the goals to be clear enough.
Even though some individuals still thought that the goals and plans should
be more tangible, many recognized that the evolving environment and the
long program duration entailed that the scope and the plans should not be
fixed too early:
Q49 (Chain, sub-program manager): “It is always a challenge in these long-term
programs and also in this [sub-program] that the environment evolves
simultaneously during the implementation. One should be able to define the
scope of the implementation to avoid unnecessary drifting, but on the other
hand the end result should be such that it actually works in that environment
when it is taken in use.”
The organization structure and the management model of Chain’s program
also seemed to be working well. Especially the program structure and the
decision-making procedure concerning the program’s projects were
described as purposeful and functional. Although the interviewees agreed
that the program had a proper governance model, some still thought that it
had taken too long to achieve this state:
Q50 (Chain, program owner): “This has been a learning opportunity, testing our
ability to implement large changes with a fast pace. And in that sense I cannot
grade our performance as excellent since it has taken us too long to get
organized, to find out what we are doing and to identify the right roles.”
Besides the common decision-making procedure, there were very few
program-wide coordination or management practices in place, since
projects were given a lot of autonomy in how to plan and organize their
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