Combining cutting-edge techniques and written in an easy-to-follow style, Agile Change Management offers pioneering tools to ensure your change initiative is embedded, adopted and delivers benefits throughout the organization. Including examples and best-practice advice, it enables you to create your own roadmap consisting of all the processes, activities and information needed to manage any type of change initiative in an agile way. By enabling the details of the change to evolve, the roadmap allows you to respond to different needs as they arise, therefore cutting time spent on planning for unnecessary resources. This pioneering approach allows you to: • manage change for both large-scale transformations and micro-level business change projects • create a change that is lean and flexible • realize benefits earlier on in the process • build strong relationships with a variety of stakeholders Including important advice for creating the right environment for change, Agile Change Management is a comprehensive resource for anyone who wants to build the capabilities of an effective change manager. Free downloadable resources, including communication activities, change roles and a change capabilities index, help you to create content for your change initiative. Available from: www.koganpage.com/agilechangemanagement
Kogan Page London Philadelphia New Delhi www.koganpage.com
£34.99 $49.95
Agile Change Management A practical framework for successful change planning and implementation
MELANIE FRANKLIN
Melanie Franklin has been responsible for the successful delivery of effective change and for creating environments that support transformational change for over 20 years. An established author, she has an impressive pedigree formed through academic research and practical consulting and is acknowledged as a thought leader in change management.
Agile Change Management
Increasingly adopted by organizations that recognize the need to respond quickly and easily to new opportunities, an agile approach enables businesses to become fit for purpose in a world of complex and continuous change.
ISBN: 978-0-7494-7098-2
Change management
Kogan Page
MELANIE FRANKLIN
Contents Introduction 1
Concept
1
6
Explaining agile working 6 Evolving solution 7 Business need 7 Iterative process 8 Iterative development 9 Collaboration 9
2
Principles
11
Five guiding principles 11
3
Roadmap
18
Introduction 18 Part 1: Developing a roadmap 19 Considerations for use 19 Using the roadmap 31 Part 2: Applying the roadmap to your change 50 Iteration 1 50 Iteration 2 and subsequent iterations 64
4
Business need
77
Introduction 77 What is business need? 79 Assigning information to type 84 Bringing the elements of business need together 85 Aligning business need to the roadmap 93 Developing your business understanding 95 Understanding who to involve 102 Generating information about the change 114 Identifying requirements and acceptance criteria 122
vi
Contents
Defining the impact of the change 132 Conclusion 145
5
Relationship building
146
Introduction 146 Understand yourself before understanding others 147 Personal awareness 147 Personal leadership 163 Building relationships with others 174 Who to build a relationship with 177 Steps in building relationships 184 Conclusion 194
6
Environment
195
Introduction 195 Setting the scene 196 Environment needs to provide reassurance 201 Environment needs to provide encouragement 208 Building a sustaining environment 217 Environment needs to provide motivation 221 Conclusion 236 Appendix 1 Change roles 237 Appendix 2 Change management documents 241 Appendix 3 Communication activities 252 Appendix 4 Change activity index 262 Appendix 5 Change capabilities index 265 Resources 269 Index 271
Online resources to accompany this book are available from www.koganpage.com/agilechangemanagement
Concept
01
Explaining agile working The approach to managing change outlined in this book is based on the concept of agility. Agility means the ability to move quickly and easily. The concept of agile working has been adopted by many organizations which have realized that their hierarchical structures and lengthy decision足making processes are no longer fit for purpose in a world of complex and con足 tinuous change. All change is complex because the environment in which we operate has become complex. There is so much interconnectivity between the systems, data and processes we use to carry out our role and the systems, as well as the data and processes of all those that we engage with including sub足 sidiaries and our partners, suppliers, customers and regulators, that it is no longer possible to define what all of these connections are, so it is not possible to predict with any certainty what the impact of a change to one process or system will be on other processes or systems. There are fewer easy answers to achieving our strategic goals. Greater economic uncertainty, the fast pace of technological change and the ex足 pectation of customers that organizations will tailor a solution to meet their individual needs has increased the volume of changes that we make to how we work. Whilst the pace of change today feels fast, it is unlikely to ever be this slow again. The pace of change impacts the expected lifespan of any change that we make. The expected lifespan of each change becomes shorter as continuous innovation leads to continuous obsolescence. This means that we are under increasing pressure to ensure that the changes we make can pay back their costs and demonstrate a return on investment within the same financial year that they are implemented.
Concept
Figure 1.1 Increase in the pace of change Fewer constants More opportunities
More changes
Shorter lifespan
Less stability
More variables
This volume means that change is continuous; it is no longer a special situ ation that is planned and resourced separately from our business as usual responsibilities. Change is no longer only conceived and implemented ‘top down’. We are all responsible for doing our job and at the same time coming up with ways in which we can improve how we work.
Evolving solution An agile approach is ideally suited to implementing change because of its emphasis on allowing the solution to evolve as the factors driving the need for change also evolve. Key to agile working is the acceptance that the change cannot be planned in detail at the start, but will need to emerge as more becomes known about the situation you are trying to improve (the business need) and the changes taking place in all aspects of your organization and the wider business environment that affect the situation.
Business need The business need is the purpose of the change. It explains why the change is necessary and is a mixture of the expected improvements (benefits), the level of quality that the change must meet (acceptance criteria) and the features and functions that the change is expected to have (requirements).
7
8
Agile Change Management
Iterative process It is better to try and change one thing and see what impact it has than to spend months planning and implementing a ‘big idea’ whose impact is unknown and which may not have the desired effect. Developing one aspect of the change, applying it to real business conditions and allowing people to assimilate how the change affects them brings greater results: ●
●
the timeframe for implementing the change is reduced by avoiding all of the detailed planning upfront, and by encouraging those involved in the change to implement it in an incremental way, allowing changes to be adopted by the users as soon as they have been created, rather than waiting until the end of the change initiative and bundling them all together as a complete solution; there is an increase in the return on investment from the change because benefits can be realized as soon as the first elements of the change are incorporated into the business environment, so the change initiative starts to pay back its costs even before it has been completed.
Return on investment This term refers to the measurement of the expected financial benefits from making the change, after the costs of planning, implementing and embedding the costs have been subtracted.
The volume of change taking place in our organizations increases the chances that requirements identified today will be out of date by the time a complex change initiative has implemented them. As soon as one require ment has been identified, it has been superseded by another idea. It is better to create an environment where there is regular and frequent discussion of what is needed, which is acted upon immediately. This also benefits those identifying the need for change because it releases them from the pressure of trying to predict every aspect of the future.
Concept
Iterative development Iterative development concerns the creation of new ways of working as a series of versions, created sequentially, where each version builds on the content of the one before it. Later versions will include additional features and functions that were not created when the earlier versions were released to the users. Planning only the outline of the change at the start and allowing the details to be defined as more becomes known about the situation ensures that the changes are fresh and up to date, which improves the overall quality of the change.
Collaboration Agile working emphasizes the need to work collaboratively with all those involved in the change, including those with technical skills who create the solution and those in business roles who will use this solution as their new way of working.
Collaboration Collaboration is a general term derived directly from the Latin words for ‘working together’. It means organized sharing of information and activities.
Collaboration increases the workability of the solution because there is a shared understanding between those creating the elements of change (project teams, system suppliers, HR functions creating the new structure or redefining the performance measurement criteria etc) and those respon sible for redefining their ways of working. This reduces the ‘them and us’ environment that is prevalent in many projects where the project team create a solution and throw it over the wall to the users at the end of the project, hoping that it will be implemented by them and benefits will be realized.
9
10
Agile Change Management
The pace of change, flexibility in the changes we make, frequent iterations and greater collaboration make an agile approach a powerful tool for the effective delivery of change. These themes will all be covered later in the book, as we explore how to apply the concept of agile working to the change initiatives we are responsible for.
Combining cutting-edge techniques and written in an easy-to-follow style, Agile Change Management offers pioneering tools to ensure your change initiative is embedded, adopted and delivers benefits throughout the organization. Including examples and best-practice advice, it enables you to create your own roadmap consisting of all the processes, activities and information needed to manage any type of change initiative in an agile way. By enabling the details of the change to evolve, the roadmap allows you to respond to different needs as they arise, therefore cutting time spent on planning for unnecessary resources. This pioneering approach allows you to: • manage change for both large-scale transformations and micro-level business change projects • create a change that is lean and flexible • realize benefits earlier on in the process • build strong relationships with a variety of stakeholders Including important advice for creating the right environment for change, Agile Change Management is a comprehensive resource for anyone who wants to build the capabilities of an effective change manager. Free downloadable resources, including communication activities, change roles and a change capabilities index, help you to create content for your change initiative. Available from: www.koganpage.com/agilechangemanagement
Kogan Page London Philadelphia New Delhi www.koganpage.com
£34.99 $49.95
Agile Change Management A practical framework for successful change planning and implementation
MELANIE FRANKLIN
Melanie Franklin has been responsible for the successful delivery of effective change and for creating environments that support transformational change for over 20 years. An established author, she has an impressive pedigree formed through academic research and practical consulting and is acknowledged as a thought leader in change management.
Agile Change Management
Increasingly adopted by organizations that recognize the need to respond quickly and easily to new opportunities, an agile approach enables businesses to become fit for purpose in a world of complex and continuous change.
ISBN: 978-0-7494-7098-2
Change management
Kogan Page
MELANIE FRANKLIN