What’s your approach to change management?

Change & Release Management Portfolio, Program & Project Management IT Strategy & Roadmap

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CIO in Telecommunication, 1,001 - 5,000 employees

I come from a transformational CIO background and change management outside of IT is critical. Bringing in all these new systems can create a lot of stress for people, especially for those who may not be as computer literate as others. Much of the change management aspect is about understanding the stress at that level. All the new systems in the world won’t help you if your people don't know how to use them, so you need to ensure they have training, education and time to adjust. You have to develop them so that they can be successful in the new organization. Long term success doesn’t come from being the biggest, strongest, or even the smartest these days, it’s about being the most adaptable.

Every business is about the people that work there. A business is a corporate entity — it's just a group of people all working together. Your goal is to help those people work together in better ways, with better tools, processes and procedures.

Director of IT in Education, 1,001 - 5,000 employees

With such a small (yet incredible) staff, that carries a multitude of responsibilities, supporting 5,000 users, processing change in an ordered, documented manner, is very important. The time involved makes the process arduous, at times, due to the consistency of the high demands.

We use self-created forms for helping to manage the change process. First is team discussion of an idea to address a need; plan is scoped, roles, mile-markers & timeline assigned; regular communication is key; implementation, assessment & follow-up. Keeps us moving forward

Computer Science Lecturer in Education, 51 - 200 employees

I use to be for several years the Change Manager in my Company.
My approach to change management can be summarized as follows:
- Understand the priority / urgency of the change.
- Create a team to guide the change.
- Communicate the change and relevant impact.
- Define the time line (schedule) for the change implementation.
- Perform the change by setting short-term & long-term targets.
- Communicate the outcome (the result) of the change.

Director in Manufacturing, 1,001 - 5,000 employees

We follow ITIL process for change control and log the actual changes in Service Now.

General approach: if you ask yourself, “Is what I’m about to do ‘Change Ticket Worthy?’ — the answer is always yes

Chief Technology Officer in Media, 2 - 10 employees

Successful change management relies on below points:

->Understand Change.
Why you need to change. What are your key objectives?
What will the benefits of the change be to the organization?
->Plan Change.
How will you secure, engage and use high-level support and sponsorship of the change?
think about what success should look like. How will you predict and assess the impact of the change that you need to make? What goals do you need to achieve?
->Implement Change.
->Communicate Change.
The change that you want to implement has to be clear and relevant, so people understand what you want them to do and why they need to do it.

CIO in Construction, 1,001 - 5,000 employees

Our approach is understand the requirement ( Business Vs User Vs Compliance). Plan for the change, UAT and implement the change ( Keep Plan B for the revert back , if required). Communicate to all stake holders.

Director of Enterprise Technology Advisory in Software, 10,001+ employees

"Just Enough"

I've worked in some very heavy ITIL change management environments, but aso in environments with little to no change control in the traditional sense. In both, I saw about the same amount of failed changes. What was different was the speed in which failed changes were resolved, and the understanding of the impact they had on the business.

As always, I think "it depends" is the answer. You need enough control to ensure the stability of your production environment, but enough agility to ensure changes can happen at the speed the organization needs. What is the risk appetite? Is peer review enough, do you need a full CAB? Does every change need a back out plan? How mature are your other service management processes?

My approach is always to try and have just enough process and policy in place which enables the organization to move at the speed they need to with the least amount of negative impact to business operations caused by technology. You need to ensure you have visibility of what is happening, good open, honest feedback with the teams your supporting and willingness to move the policy process up and down the scale of tightness as things evolve over time.

IT Strategist in Government, 1,001 - 5,000 employees

A change management plan is a mandatory part of any medium and large size project. For smaller initiatives we include change management as part of documentation updates and user training. The part of the change management affecting existing processes (or creating new ones) is addressed separately through business process analysis.

Board Member in Healthcare and Biotech, 1,001 - 5,000 employees

Change management is an interesting "management" discipline on which thousands of books have been written and consultants continue to make money. So with a bit of experience, luck and brickbats that came my way during the last 4 odd decades of helping IT and business with "change" this is what I recommend and practice now. Change could be technology forced or business need, the approach seems to work in both scenarios.

1. Identify and understand the trigger for the change, could be new tech, upgrade, business process change, old staff changing role, whatever, clearly articulate it
2. List the staff who will be impacted by this change - direct and indirect
3. Involve them in the design of the new, show them why the change is better for not just them but the overall enterprise
4. Document their challenges and reasons for resisting the change. Show them (if possible) how the new is better than the past. (In most cases the resistance is due to: I am afraid of the new, it may increase/decrease my work, reduce my position of power, make me irrelevant, ....
5. Address these soft factors in 1-1 and workshops as required, repeat where required
6. Identify a champion within the group who can convey the message in their own terms
7. Acknowledge and reward change embraced, if it is a large group, add gamification
8. For those who still resist (and there will always be a smattering that will obstinately refuse with various logical sounding reasons, take a tough stand, assuming HR is willing to execute).

As the senior leader, it is contingent on you to take these steps along with your team, delegated work is not always effective. You working alongside will also give a boost to your team.

The easy part of change management is the trainings that can be classroom or virtual, give them a cheat sheet for quick reference, have champions available for clarifications, helpdesk to capture and resolve issues.

Chief Information Technology Officer in IT Services, 201 - 500 employees

I always determine the needs from the opening phase to introduce the change management in every project. We integrate work activities and encourages team performance using a specific approach.

For us engage stakeholders from the start in the most important. We also identify change leaders within the project team we encourage feedback all the way long.

Do not forget to celebrate team’s accomplishments. These celebrations should congratulate each person and each team that has adopted the new practices. These people will become role models for all other employees.