Preparing for Change

Modified on Sat, 20 Jul at 10:32 AM

This document contains the following sections:

Change Management Strategy
Change Impact (Risk)
Success Metrics

The purpose of this section is to assist you in drafting your change management plan. The change management plan is your framework for managing the people side of change throughout the lifecycle of your project and post Go Live.

Change Management Strategy

The Sponsor and Project team should meet and discuss the questions below as part of a change management strategy exercise. The answers you collect and collate, along with the completion of additional activities found in this section, will help you build out the framework for your Change Management Plan.

What is the Objective of the change?
What is the Scope of the change?
How will we Measure the Success of the change? See Success Metrics below.
Who is being impacted by the change?

What is being changed (processes, systems, job roles, etc.)?

You will not need to ‘break this answer down’ into discrete components at this stage. After the Analysis and Design Workshops lead by your Sparkrock Application Consultants, more granularity around these types of changes can be defined and included in your Change Management Plan.

What is the timeline, and does it compete with other initiatives? If so, what are those initiatives?
What is the perceived need for this change among employees and managers?
How have past changes been managed?
Is there a shared vision of the change for the organization?
How much change is going on right now?
Will regions, divisions, or groups be impacted differently than others?
Were certain groups advocating a different solution to the same problem?
Are some groups heavily invested with how things are done today?
Do we need a Communication Strategy & Plan? See the Communication Plan for more details on how to develop this plan.
Do we need a Training Strategy & Plan? See the Training Plan for more details on how to develop this plan.
Do we need 'change promoters and activators' to assist with managing the change across the organization? If so, who should be a part of that change management team?

Activators - Managers and supervisors with employees affected by the change play a key role in helping their employees through the transition process. These managers and supervisors are the preferred senders of change messages related to how a change personally impacts employees

Promoters - Any senior or mid-level manager with responsibility for employees or systems impacted by the change. In this context, a sponsor is defined as any business leader whose support and active engagement is necessary for the change to be successful.

In the development of your change strategies it is recommended that you form a Change Management Team. The team members should represent a variety of functions, departments and levels in the organization. They should have excellent communication skills, business influence, be committed to the change, understand the business, and be a team player. The team does not have to be working on your project full time but must be able to commit some time to the project.

Change Impact (Risk)

Why

In the process of considering the different types and impact of the change, we need to consider what might happen leading up to and implementing the change as well as what may be the unintended consequences of the change. Keep in mind that the larger and more disruptive the change the greater the risk, whereby small and incremental change will have less risk.

When

The Risk Assessment is conducted as part of preparing for change and occurs during the planning phase of your project. It is integral to managing risk during and post implementation and contributes to your Communications and Resistance Management Plans. The Risk Assessment should be updated throughout the project with your communications and resistance plans updated accordingly.

How

Conduct interviews with Sponsor, Core Project Team as individuals or in a group.

While conducting the interviews you are making every effort to answer the following questions to measure the level of risk for each department or group:

What risks may occur upfront, during, and after implementation?
What tactics will you put in place to minimize these risks?

Risk Assessment Template

Risk ID	Risk Description	Risk (Low, Med, High, Very High)	Risk Response	Mitigation Strategy	Who is responsible	In Place by when	Status (Open, Closed, On Hold, Monitor)	Status Date
1	Identify the risk and assess the significance and likelihood of it occurring and plan the contingency. - What risks may occur upfront? - Identify the key concepts that may arise along the way.
2
3
4

Risk Response Definitions

Avoid	Use when you want to be sure that the negative risk is not encountered. Take action to eliminate the threat or protect the project from its impact. (e.g. Finance department is 125% allocated during year-end, period so schedule project to avoid conflicting with year-end activities)
Mitigate/Control	Take steps to reduce adverse effects. (e.g. users in department X habitually skip training, so meet with them to explain the importance (and fun) of training).
Transfer	Outsource or reassign the risk to an individual or department outside the project team. (e.g. no training room available, so rent an appropriate space with appropriate technology)
Accept	Acknowledge the inevitability of the risk and make a deliberate decision to accept it without engaging in special efforts to control it. (e.g. some staff will struggle with the new system, even after we execute our awesome change management plan).
Enhance	Response to a positive risk wherein you try to increase the chance of the risk happening. The opposite of mitigation. (e.g. senior management has promised a day off to the project team if they finish the project 10% early, so compress the schedule by adding additional UAT resources)

Success Metrics

Why

Your success metrics should indicate whether the individuals impacted by the change are progressing through their change journeys and getting to the ‘new normal’ state, in a timeframe established as part of the objectives of the Project, after the Go Live date. For these metrics, the individual is the unit of change, and measuring individual progress can be an indicator of overall project success.

When

The success metrics are established as part of preparing for change and occurs during the planning phase of your project. Establishing metrics is integral to assessing user adoption and contributes to the Reinforcement Plan.

How

The metrics below are commonly used to measure where employees are in the change process and how they are progressing. The methods used to obtain these measures include surveys, assessments, observation, and performance evaluations.

Examples of Adoption metrics:

Usage and utilization reports
Compliance and adherence reports
Proficiency measures
Employee engagement, buy-in and participation measures
Employee feedback
Issue, compliance and error logs
Help desk calls and requests for support
Employee satisfaction survey results

If you require assistance with developing your Change Management Strategy, or with one of the Preparing for Change activities (Change Impact, Success Metrics) please contact your Sparkrock Project Manager to arrange a needs assessment meeting with the Sparkrock Training & Organizational Readiness Lead.