What are the benefits and challenges of agile change management?

Agile change management allows for flexibility in case there are changing circumstances or requirements, enabling the organization to respond quickly to market changes or customer needs. Finding often derail the original plan and agile allows room for such iterations.

Agile change management also promotes continuous improvement by breaking down large changes into smaller, manageable actions that can be regularly reviewed and adjusted as needed.

Agile Change Management has many benefits; increasing the user experience and engagement by reiterating on user feedback, move quickly with a dedicated team, it can be innovative and collaborative with users, resulting in building a better outcome for everyone.

Agile change management needs the right environment to really work. The benefits are better projects, faster fixes, more information, more agile teams, more responsiveness...the list goes on. It will struggle to work in a certain structures and cultures that require hierarchies and process expectations rooted in a waterfall paradigm. The benefits are worth engaging in a culture fix before jumping in.

How can we challenge agile change management to quick fix during change management process? As agile change management offers quick solutions to change, the identified quick fix areas or options have to be thoroughly examined and analysed before implementation. High level engagement of all stakeholders and players during change management process will narrow possibilities for errors and mistakes, but also may prolong decision making process and implementation.

While agile change management has many benefits, there are also some challenges and risks associated with this approach. When the change plan is agile there’s an understanding of the employees that it’s an iterative process which can lead to a sense no clear direction. Without a clear vision or roadmap, agile change management can lead to aimless iteration and a lack of focus on achieving specific goals as well as ineffective collaboration and communication between teams, which can lead to misunderstandings, delays, and even failure.

While agile methodologies excel in adapting to change, they also face limitations such as scope creep, resource strain, documentation issues, stakeholder dependence, insufficient initial planning, and compromised quality assurance.

Agile change management is great for organizations that want to stay competitive and responsive to the ever-changing business landscape. However, it's important to recognize that this approach presents unique challenges. As a change management professional, I have found that one of the biggest hurdles is balancing agility and accountability. While agility allows for rapid prototyping and testing, accountability ensures adequate checks and balances are in place to ensure quality and compliance. Another key challenge is to cultivate a culture of collaboration and continuous learning. Agile change can truly be successful only when everyone involved can embrace change and work together towards a common goal.

The Human-Centered Change? methodology introduced in the best-selling book 'Charting Change' is designed to help organizations and change leaders plan their change and transformation initiatives in ways that build and maintain momentum and match the speed of change to what the organization and its people can absorb. The Change Planning Toolkit? available at https://charting-change.com includes an Agile Change Management Kanban worksheet and the ten free downloads includes the Organizational Agility Framework.

I’m not sure ADKAR fits precisely into this example without further context. Perhaps while using a Scrum approach and paying close attention to how individuals navigate their own Awareness, Desire, etc as they participate in the Scrum, would blend both a bit better.

Many Agile PM's have no project plan/exclude change management. Integrating change management deliverables with the project deliverables are key (e.g., project deliverable for Technical Go-Live needs a deliverable after it to start capturing training screenshots/videos). The Agile project plan is similar to any Waterfall project methodology. An Agile project starts with pre-planning (e.g., vision is defined). The PM includes assigning change management with team members and estimates of time, budget, and scope. The big difference in an Agile project plan is only the initial sprint is drafted in detail. When this sprint is done, the next one is created.

Effective agile change management requires proper change planning, but very of the literature focuses on this key area. This was the genesis for 'Charting Change' and the Change Planning Toolkit?. To be successful at agile change you must understand and be able to measure change readiness and change saturation. You must be able to accurately estimate the right pacing to ensure the highest changes for change adoption and absorption. My Organizational Agility Framework focuses your efforts on achieving the right balance between flexibility and fixedness and is available as a free download at https://charting-change.com.

Some Agile practitioners believe that the flexible methodology should dictate no process documentation along the way. This is a mistake. The book Agile Documentation provides a great roadmap to striking that right amount of critical notation. Cloud-based enterprise content management tools also make it a breeze to go from iterative Scrum notes to the ever-important end-of-project user documentation.

Do Not Forget the "Unspoken" in agile Change Management: 1. Iterations: Things like Stakeholder Mapping and Change Impact Analysis are NOT a one time exercises 2. Co-Create: Be Stakeholder centric in creating the feedback Channels for the Communication result. More doesn't always means better. Aim for quality feedbacks not noises. 3. Involve the Functionals: It is awkward if the Knowledge Transfer for technical trainings falls into Change Management deliverables, especially in Tech Implementation initiatives. Sometimes it just means that the Functional teams just don't want to do it.

At the end of the day change affects people and vice versa so remember to privatize communication and collaboration, this fosters creativity, innovation, and success in your agile change management initiative.

When a team wants to do "hybrid" Agile, be prepared to call out risks. (1) As many Change Management execution deliverables are near the end of software projects, "hybrid" Agile project teams don't think about change management until it's too late. For example, an enterprise-wide communication can take 3-5 weeks for high level executives/sponsors to approve, if they are not part of the team, or a draft was not pre-circulating. (2) Change managers need to be ready to call out risks and escalate when the team cuts corners (no project plan, no Scrum master or not a dedicated team.). (3) Change managers need to be brought in early (e.g., if users are expecting a full blown product in the first sprint, the entire project may fail).