🔄 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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