I spent about three hours on Friday, brainstorming with regard to my research proposal. The results of that thinking appeared in my previous blog entry. On Saturday I spent about the same amount of time looking for introductory papers in three disciplines - organisational change management, engineering change management (ECM) and product management. On Sunday I printed the papers and glanced at them but didn't have much time to concentrate on them.
Yesterday evening, I sat down with the printed papers and my mobile computer, and started reading the papers, extracting the salient points and adding them to the research proposal. I was very pleased to note that one of the papers on ECM contained a five stage model which was very similar to mine. I was able to contrast ECM with my proposed change management discipline and in doing so, I was able to present my model naturally, without feeling that I was pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
After I completed writing up the papers and introducing my model, I looked again at my mentor's post from last week which started this flurry of activity. He suggested looking at stakeholder literature, which is a topic which I hadn't considered. After entering that term into Google Scholar, I was presented with a list of papers from which I chose one, entitled "A roadmap for IT project implementation". This was exactly what I needed, as it provided some choice quotes. There was also room for critical evaluation: this paper deals with project implementation, e.g. implementing Priority, whereas my research is concerned with implementing enhancements, which of course are on a much smaller scale in all respects. Fewer people are involved, the costs are very low and the time span is negligible.
Once I had added a paragraph or two, I realised that I had a complete document which I could send back to my mentor. I was quite surprised that I had managed to implement the changes in such a short time. Now I can focus my time on other activities.
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