ABSTRACT

Oulu university of applied sciences Master degree in entrepreneurship and business competence

Author: Anu Pokela Title of thesis: Change management competence – key contributor to project success Supervisor: Tiina Gallén Term and year when the thesis was submitted: Autumn 2013 Number of pages: 63

Nowadays majority of the work in telecommunications industry is done in projects, work has become projectified. Project managers are the key contributors to making things happen in the organizations. Therefore they play vital role in achieving the goals and targets of the organizations. Change management is a structured approach to transform individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. The current definition of change management includes both organizational change management processes and individual change management models, which together are used to manage the people side of change (Creasey 2009).

Strategic target is to improve change management competence in the projects. The ultimate goal is that by enhancing the change management competence, key project success rate in NSN operations could be improved. The objective of this thesis is to support this strategic target by collecting valuable data from key project managers. Based on this valuable data, practical recommendations are done to management team how to enhance the change management competence in projects.

Considering the objectives of this thesis and the target organization, the most suitable research method was qualitative interview study; more precisely focused interview or theme interview. Theme interview is focused on planned themes. It aims to gather in-depth information. It is planned in advance and it has clear purpose. The most essential thing is that interview is carried out in themes, not in exactly planned detailed questions. The interaction in the theme interview creates the meaning for the researched issues (Hirsjärvi & Hurme 2001, 42-48).

Based on the research results, project execution could be improved in NSN. There are lots of good elements and projects are managed well with strong focus on technical side of the project issues, but currently project managers are not leading the change the way they should to gain successful results. Improvement could be made by improving the project manager’s capabilities as change leaders and ensuring proper change management resourcing for projects.

Keywords: project management, change management, project manager, competence, change management team