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

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contribute to advancing the program plans. One manager blamed the
enormous scope of the change:
Q85 (Center, manager involved in program initiation): “Maybe the reason for
why it has remained unclear who’ll take the responsibility for this program is
that this is such a huge issue.”
Even though the change program was supposed to significantly affect
Center’s member organizations, their representatives were not actively
involved in the initiation and planning activities. In all, resources and
autonomy given to Center’s program were clearly not in balance with the
ambitious intent, which may provide an explanation for why the program
team failed to transform the high-level goals into concrete objectives, plans
and projects.
Compared to the other two programs, the original scope of Bureau’s
change program was the most clearly defined and probably the least
complex. The program was originally limited to information technology
(IT), although the scope was later on expanded to encompass also other
aspects and the program was followed by a larger structural reform. Further
limiting the challenge, Bureau’s program was designed to consist of phases
that each included the opportunity to review the results and to deliberate
whether to continue or not. The program manager explained this approach:
Q86 (Bureau, program manager): “It was decided from early on to construct [the
program] to consist of three phases, each of them with the possibility to make a
stop. This is how it should be in my opinion: you need to proceed in steps but
you also need to have a vision of the whole renewal, how it might be run from
start to finish. For most parts the program has actually followed these plans, at
least thus far.”
Bureau’s program originally aimed at creating a new kind of an IT
management solution for the organization, and the program manager was
able to sketch the main solution in the early days of program initiation in a
short amount of time, with some help from just a few experts. Ideas on how
to renew IT management had been discussed for several years and the
program launch was viewed as an opportunity to put these ideas into
practice. Even though the program’s key managers from early on had a
good perception of the program’s content, they still engaged a wide
audience of people in program initiation and planning. Their primary
purpose was not to gain input to program plans but to engage and commit
people throughout the organization to the proposed change. The program
structure that was established after the centralized planning phase was less
complex than in the other two cases, as there were no sub-programs, but
the program consisted of just four projects and four support teams.
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