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

Categories and types of
boundary activities
Description of the activity in the case Examples of quotes Frequency
(total:
187 quotes)
% of
activities
Category III: Crossing the boundary outwards 80 43%
Informing Informing activities focused on reporting the program’s
progress according to the management system of the
organization, and communicating about the forthcoming
changes to the personnel.
Middle manager of a central unit involved in the program: “This
has been communicated quite much also to the top management of
[a business division], so they are quite well on board about how
this goes.”
39 21%
Legitimating and committing There were active legitimating and committing efforts,
which related firstly to lobbying the program idea to top
management and after that to getting a wider support for
the program by participating people throughout Bureau in
the current state analysis and program planning activities.
Program manager: ”[The original program owner] took care of
the external relations, meaning that he sold this program to
[Bureau’s] top management and acquired the mandate to do this…
and he also built awareness of this program.”
34 18%
Influencing There were some influencing activities, related to paving
the way for other change efforts in the organization and
developing the organization’s IT policies beyond the scope
of the program.
Support team manager: ”This [support project] has also supported
operations management and its development in whole [Bureau]…
It has contributed to the development of the IT support of these
processes and the processes themselves.”
7 4%
Category IV: Blocking the boundary 10 5%
Guarding Some guarding activities were found, mainly related to
isolating the program by deciding not to apply certain
organizational control procedures in the program.
Project participant: “There is this [project audit procedure] that
should in principle be applied to all IT programs, projects and
systems … But this is like the shoemaker’s son going barefoot: the
projects in [the program] have not followed [the policy].”
7 4%
Enclosing Just a few enclosing activities were found, mainly related
to one of the projects that had been very autonomous and
had not reported to anyone.
Project manager: “From the beginning we realized that if we do
[this project] with a low profile, we will get fewer comments from
others. Thus we started to do this very independently, keeping a
low profile, and we don’t really report to anyone either. … It
provides us with freedom and enables fast operation.”
3 2%