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🔄 Technical Change Management

Change requires management, preparation, planning and operations.

Preparation and planning

  • Innovations within digital technology
  • Effectively communicating the rationable for the change
  • Communicating hte benefits of the change
  • Getting buy in from all areas of the business who the change effects

Operations

  • Interaction of new or upgraded tools and processes into current digital ecosystem
  • Establishing best practice for use of new or upgraded tools and processes
  • Facilitating processes and business models
  • Applying fixes

Change management

The components of change management include:

  • Change advisory board (CAB)
    • Prioritise change requests
    • Review change requests
    • Monitor change process
    • Provide feedback
  • Request for change
    • Viability
      • Financial
      • Resource
    • Analysis of benefits of implementing change request
    • Stages of approval
  • Setting SMARTER objectives
  • Risks
  • Impact
  • Configuration of digital system impacted by the change = Rollback planning
  • Reproducibility
  • Traceability
  • Document
SMARTER

S - Specific

M - Measurable

A - Achievable

R - Realistic

T- Time-Bound

E - Evaluate

R - Re-Evaluate

Risks

Changes always have risks, they include:

  • Resistance to change from staff / teams
  • Misuse of new tools and processes
  • Inadequate support infrastructure or resource
  • Change stalling or impending workflows
  • Knowledge management and single sources of dependencies

Impact

  • Forecasting the impact of change implementation on the operational environment
  • Measuring positive and negative impact
  • Analysis of positive and negative impact

Configuration of digital system impacted by the change

  • Current and proposed

Roll-back planning

  • Back-up methodology
  • Local
  • Cloud
  • Disaster recovery planning

Reproducibility

  • Replicating change across other departments or businesses
  • Test environments:
    • Servers and software

Traceability

  • Responsibility
  • Accountability
  • Auditing

Document

  • Maintaining up-to-date information
  • Recording of all decisions
  • Retaining change documentation
  • User training manuals
  • Version control

When making changes, it is important to document and log everything you do, in case you need to roll back.

Key points are:

  • Maintaining up-to-date information
  • Recording of all decisions
  • Retaining change documentation
  • User training manuals
  • Version control

Factors that drive Change

Internal Factors

  • Restructuring the process of reorganising a business in a major way such as:
    • Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Turnaround eg. change of leadership
    • Repositioning
    • Cost restructuring
    • Divestment
    • Spin off
  • Expansion /growth
  • Downsizing
  • New srategic objectives

External Factors

  • Political
    • Shift in government priorities (for example Brexit, international trade deals)
  • Economic
    • Meeting newfinding/revenue streams
    • Recession
    • Inflation
    • Consumer trends
  • Social
    • Change in human behaviour (for example birth rates)
    • Market/social trends (for example rise in online shopping)
    • Socioeconomic aspects
    • Remote working
    • Cultural expectations
  • Technological
    • Emerging technologies
    • Innovation/Efficiency
    • Artificial Intellegence
    • New payment methods
  • Legal/Regulatory
    • New legislation
    • Changes/updates to legislation (for example national minimum wage, working hours, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)/Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018)
    • Removal of European Union (EU) legislation
  • Environmental
    • Sustainability
    • Reduction in carbon foorprint
    • Green energy
    • Digital/tech waste
    • Pandemic
  • Competitors
    • New product/service
    • Entering new markets

Methods to respond to change

  • New or amended:
    • Policies (for example updated health and safety, due to changes in legislation)
    • Business processes (for example innovation for new markets)
    • Products or services (for example innovation for new markets)
  • New or improved digital systems for hardware and/or software (for example DVLA systems, NHS referrals, online banking)
  • Training needs analysis
  • Restructuring of priotiries and resources

Responding to change

The steps that organisations take to respond to change

  • Planning for change
    • Setting budgets and timescales
    • Communicating the change activity to all stakeholders
    • Clarifying resources required (for example hardware, software. staffing)
  • Managing change implementation
    • Monitoring process during implementation
    • Maintaining quality of service during change
    • Business acceptance and compliance with change
    • Team upskilling and development to facilitate the change
    • Communicating outcoems of change
    • Post-project reviews
  • Reinforcing change
    • Reinforcment planning
      • What steps to take if change isn't implemented quickly enough
  • Collating and analysing outcomes of change data
  • Monitoring change
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