The Advantages of Change Management

Many individuals in the technology world view the change management process as a severe pain and a hindrance to productivity. Just the thought of spending three to five times the amount of effort into completing the paper work versus the time spent completing the task at hand will send the level of frustration through the roof.  In my early years the feeling was mutual and completely understandable but in time I started to leverage change management. Changing my mindset on this topic started to result in improved planning, increased success rate, reduced stress and improved control of the work being performed.

Back in the day when organizations were not so dependent upon technology many technology teams just shot from the hip and made impacting changes on the fly as needed. Now that these same organizations rely on a high level of service availability causing the practices of the past to come to an abrupt stop. The trick to leveraging change management is utilizing it as a tool to formulate a strategy of what needs to be done. This becomes a significant advantage especially in projects requiring many moving parts, multi-team coordination with minimal down time and tight delivery deadlines.

Some of the ways leveraging change management to avoid the common pitfalls of performing changes is by observing the following items:

• Clear understanding what needs to be done- In the modern workplace where everything needed to be delivered the day before personnel are under a great amount of pressure. The problem with this type of environment is it leads to higher risk of mistakes, misunderstandings and other related problems due to always being in a rush.  During the planning phase of a change request this is the time where a high level of focus is required to ensure that every detail is scrutinized.
• Deep thinking- During the initial planning process this is the time where you start brainstorming and documenting all of the moving parts and details of what needs to be accomplished. It's imperative to note all relative details from start to finish regardless of how minimal it may seem at the time. It’s best to list negligible items now and remove later in the planning stages versus something being overlooked and causing problems while performing the change request. During this is the time is where you leave no rock unturned.
• Steps of implementation- Listing every single step of the implementation process is a critical component of documenting what will occur. This segment of the documentation must provide a list of step-by-step instructions from start to finish as if you’re creating a process to hand over for someone. When performing complex action items it may be necessary to list any expected observations in order to identify possible problems immediately. By documenting all steps involved along with any observations not only will this simplify the work being done but will also facilitate the manager and peer review process.
• Coordination- Some change request are very complex in nature due to the fact that the work required may contain many moving parts with minimal time to complete what needs to be done. Detailed coordination with other teams is critical in a time crunch and everything needs to go as planned. Creating an outline of all the teams required along with listing individual responsibilities will validate “who does what?” and confirm other action items are not being overlooked.
• Preparing for the worst- In the moment when things go wrong it feels as if you’re suddenly thrown in a world of chaos and everything goes out the window in the effort to regain control. The planning phase of the maintenance is the perfect time to discuss items that may jeopardize what needs to be done. During the planning stages the implementer must cover all the bases of what could possibly go wrong along with corrective actions. This additional level of preparation can assist in recovering the maintenance work in order to move forward or initiate rollback procedures.
• Stakeholder Communication- Communicating all change request with stakeholders within the organization can prevent problems with conflicting maintenance work or other business impacting processes.Communicating the work being perform should be conducted with customers, other technology teams, management and other stakeholders. This will assure all parties are aware of what will occur, risk involved and also prevent possible scheduling problems with other conflicting change request.
• Peer review- Peer review is an excellent safeguard against implementation problems, missed action items, etc. In situations where a change request requires many action items or high level of complexity having more than one person assess the information is highly recommended. Being were all human and bound to make mistakes from time to time peer review can be used as a second pair of eyes to ensure the information leading up to the work being perform is accurate.
• Management approval- Management approval to some may seem like a trivial item but does serve a specific purpose. Management approval ensures that all work to be perform is validated to move forward along with awareness of what's occurring within their teams and understanding the risk involved.
• Post-testing- Post testing is essential to validating that all services are fully functional after the work is performed. Depending upon the type of work being done a wide range of testing procedures may have to be performed even up to the point where other teams have to be engaged to perform independent testing. There is nothing more demoralizing assuming all systems are working normal after change work occurs then find out something is broken causing severe impact upon the organization.
• Rollback Procedures- Rollback procedures in most cases will be the reverse order of the implementation steps. Depending upon the work being perform this action sometimes may require additional steps. Listing all the necessary actions to complete roll back procedures in the event of problems will ensure that you can recover and put the systems back into normal operation.
• When to perform rollback procedures- The decision of when to perform rollback procedures has been a tricky problem for some individuals. The plan of action that I have formulated over time is creating a reasonable list of timed milestone throughout the maintenance window. As the work is being performed if you are not able to meet the time objectives listed then it’s time to start considering rollback implementation. Failure to do will put you at risk of going past the time scheduled and risk impacting the organization due to not having services available when needed.
• Post-review- Performing reviews after work is complete identifies and documents if all work performed went as planned or if any unexpected observations occurred. The information collected from the review also serves as an opportunity towards continuous improvement of the process itself and/or preventing others from encountering similar problems. In cases where the post-review process is ignored the organization is at risk of repeating similar problems.