How do you know your change management has been successful?
When organisations complete projects, it is critical that its success – or failure – is captured and measured. Learning the lessons from past projects (both negative and positive) can help drive better execution into the future and also validate for a project delivery team and change executive that they are on the right track.
Measuring Change and Success
Measuring the success or otherwise of the technical delivery aspects of a project can be relatively straightforward. The key measures like time, cost and critical functionality can be easy to identify and track whether success has been achieved. However, an eloquent technical implementation does not always translate into a successful project unless it is matched with equally effective business engagement and change management activities.
The measurement of the success of these change management activities is less straightforward and can be neglected during post implementations reviews (PIRs). Often the change management activities are difficult to link to easily identifiable or quantifiable success measures and as such are either excluded from PIRs or the capture of them is ineffective.
Below are some steps that can be taken to ensure during a project review the execution of the change management activities are also suitably captured and analysed:
Cast the Net Wide
It is not always immediately apparent who in the business is affected downstream by a projects technical or business process changes. Take the time to work with the business to understand and identify who may be impacted beyond the immediate user group and ensure they are included in the PIR process as appropriate.
More is More
Once these users have been identified, err on the side of excess. Include as many of the impacted users along the chain as possible in any review process to get as wide a range of responses as can be achieved. Often users will not respond but typically no news is good news and paints a picture of the success of the project in itself. Either way users will appreciate being included even if they do not take the time to respond.
Use Technology to Your Advantage
Cost and time constraints (on both sides) and also geography mean not everyone can be interviewed one on one. Furthermore large workshops with the business can often be difficult to manage and not necessarily be the right forum for people to speak up, particularly if it is in the negative.
An effective way to gather large quantities of data across disparate and often large user groups is online surveys. These surveys should be designed so the information is easy to understand and collated once the responses are submitted.
Ask the Right Questions
The project team should be open to all findings, whether negative or positive, and the survey questions should be structured accordingly.
Change management is not an exact science so ensure the surveys allow for the users to include a rating so they can express how they feel they were engaged beyond a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Allow for a free text field of reasonable length at the end of the survey with a request that any further information be added. Follow up directly on any feedback that needs clarification. Also ask how things could have been done better or improved.
It is these responses that will add the most value and build up the project team’s change management IP for the next project.
Capturing the Impact of Change
Change management is not an exact science and every organisation and user group has a differing ability to absorb change. By following some of the above suggestions the effectiveness of any change effort can be captured and accurately assessed. Future change activities can then be modified appropriately to increase the chances of the project being a business change success and not just a technical one.
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