When is the right time for the Change Manager to join the project?
When a project gets underway, should a Change Manager be involved from day one, or are they just needed when the action starts?
Change Managers often feel they’ve been brought to projects too late, and that decisions about activities they need to manage have not been well thought out.
Involvement from day one
There are significant benefits of having a change manager in a project from day one:
Business case & scope creation
The input of the Change Manager is extremely valuable when a project’s business case and scope are being created. These documents are typically written by Project Managers along Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), who overlook the end user journey, concentrating on delivery aspects.
The business case must include:
Since defining these points for a business case are the bread-and-butter work of expert Change Managers, their input is highly recommended.
A seasoned change professional will add input that other team members may overlook.
Problem: lengthy time gaps between business case & implementation
Although the involvement of a Change Manager is highly beneficial in creation of the business case and scope at the early stages of project work, there are often little or no additional contributions they can meaningfully make until much later in the project.
This gap in the Change Manager’s contributions is particularly prevalent if the project is a digital transformation.
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As an example, we've seen numerous situations in which back-end software has had to be updated to conform to new regulatory requirements. Those updates can take any length of time; delays of 18 months are quite common in these scenarios.
The question now is what the Change Manager will do during the extended delay between their assisting to create the business case and then getting involved with activity planning? .
Solution: Fractional Change Managers
Here’s where organizations that employ full-time permanent change resources have an advantage. It’s common for Change Managers to work across multiple projects.
These Change Managers can be deployed as Fractional Change Managers to projects when needed, such as when forming the business case or running early pilots and user acceptance testing. Their involvement can be ramped up as change activity in the project is required.
Managing and deploying fractional change resources is also helpful as a project finishes, ensuring that the project does not suffer from abandonement post go-live.
Fractional Change Managers save the day
A scenario that we have seen occur in many situations is that a project goes live, with the new system or process working successfully. After two weeks of close care, support is handed over to a business-as-usual (BAU) team, leaving nobody to continue to drive adoption or promote continuous improvement.
A Fractional Change Manager can be extremely useful at this stage as they can ramp continue their involvement to ensure the project fully realises the benefits outlined in the business case.
Our platform ChangePlan helps organizations understand and optimize the capacity of their Change Management team, whether they are full time, fractional, contractor or a mix. Click here to book your demonstration in which our team can show how ChangePlan prevents projects from failing to achieve full benefits realisation.
Senior Organizational Change Management Leader with over 8+ years of experience, dedicated to driving adoption in large enterprise-wide Process, Technology, and Business Transformations to achieve Strategic Objectives.
11 个月Loved your perspective on Change Management in project lifecycles! Your post highlight the value of early involvement. The idea of Fractional Change Managers is thought provoking, offering flexibility and a strategic approach to deployment. It's crucial to address the time gaps effectively and ensure post-implementation support for ongoing success. Thanks for sharing these practical considerations.
Organizational Change Manager | Consultant | Trainer
11 个月Your article does a great job of showing it’s important to get a change manager involved on day one. There’s just one point I’m not very sure of. With digital transformation, the change is so extensive — because it’s about changing the way the business works, not just about a tool —, that I think change managers have a full plate the entire time. With smaller initiatives, it may, indeed, be the case that there’s a gap in activity. Still, for any initiative, regardless of amplitude, change managers can use all the time they can get to drive activities that get the impacted audience familiar with the change and, hopefully, excited about it. In my experience at least, there’s never been a time where there was really nothing to do from an OCM perspective; in fact, not only was every project a full-time job for the OCM team, but I/we could have actually used some additional hands on deck.
Fueling HOPE for adaptive mastery of change. Consulting psychologist making change work.
11 个月#adaptability Inevitably, timelines, prioritization and resources will shift - before, during and after. Change will change! Besides the science of change, there is need of the art of change. This demands a social dimension of engaging with the head, hands and HEART of all the stakeholders. Sustainably successful change is a people journey not an event. Engaging, enabling, encouraging change WITH, BY & FOR the stakeholders is premised on relationships and social interactions. Collaborative connections need time and space to form, storm and perform.
Retired Change Management Consultant
11 个月Way sooner than the client thinks. Omg, change is not the caboose on this train. ??