Most companies are moving towards an agile approach to implementing their projects, as it shows value faster and enables the project team to react effectively to changing requirements. Being in change management means that we need to be able to adapt to this change FIRST and be capable of applying change management in an agile way. But how does this affect change management and how does it impact the way WE are USED to doing things?

This does put a lot of pressure on change management due to faster paced implementation, but also makes it easier as you are focused on a small chunk of work and smaller stakeholder groups.

If we look at applying Change Management within a waterfall environment, your focus is on the bigger picture/end goal and you will lead your stakeholder groups with one vision through all your change management activities.

Agile brings about a 2-fold approach that needs to be considered when implementing change management and looking at each change management activity in an agile environment:

  1. The OVERALL project
  2. The CURRENT sprint

… but that transition is not easy!

As a change management professional, applying structured methodologies to a very structured waterfall project approach seems logical and almost always feels natural. However, given today’s ever-changing customer and business demands, most organisations are going the Agile route for the following benefits:

  1. Accelerating the time it takes to get to market.
  2. Managing the changing priorities.
  3. Improved alignment between business and IT.

For example:

The Vision

  1. The OVERALL project > You need to identify an OVERALL vision for the project and what the end goal is of the OVERALL project.
  2. The CURRENT sprint > What do you want to accomplish with the current sprint and what benefits does the current sprint hold?

This needs to be done for each aspect of change management and for each sprint of the project as explained below:

Stakeholder Management:

  1. Who are all the stakeholders that will ultimately be impacted by this project? It might not be possible to identify all the stakeholders at the start of the project or even before the first sprint, but the stakeholder list will grow with each sprint and some stakeholders might be impacted more than once by different sprints. Therefore, an OVERALL project stakeholder list should be kept and updated with each sprint.
  2. Who is impacted by this current sprint? Who do I need to communicate to right NOW? This helps to focus on smaller groups of people and could help make your change management activities more effective due to the smaller amount of people that need to be engaged. Depending on the timeframe of each sprint, your type and amount of engagements might differ. You might be able to combine some efforts into one, depending on the amount of information that you need to share.

Change Impact Assessment (CIA):

  1. A high-level CIA should be conducted to understand the aim of embarking on the journey and identifying the goal, as well as the benefits realisation. This will change as the program/project progress so a follow up should be conducted every now and again with the Sponsor to keep track of any changes to the goals or the direction of the journey.
  2. For each sprint, a CIA needs to be conducted to ensure that the change management plan for the sprint is relevant and to accommodate the timeframe of the sprint. Your change management activities might differ per sprint or it might stay the same, it depends on the impact and therefore it is critical to conduct a short CIA for each sprint to ensure the change management activities are relevant and effective for the current sprint.

Strategy and Change Plan: The strategy for change management and communication needs to state that it will be conducted according to the project’s identified sprints and will be tailored for each sprint. It is also necessary to have a baselined change plan that will be followed for each sprint to ensure a consistent way of conducting change management for each sprint.

Communication: The overall approach and message of the project must be supported by each sprint’s communication, driving the overall vision and aim. Therefore, a clear understanding must first be obtained through a CIA of the overall project and measured throughout the project lifecycle for each sprint to ensure there is still alignment. If a change in the overall vision and/or aim is depicted, it should be communicated accordingly.

Engagement & Training: Depending on the timeframe of each sprint, see if it allows for engagement or only communication. If possible, include a demo of the sprint in the engagement sessions. Also determine if training is required for the specific sprint.

Readiness assessment: This is dependent on the sprint and the benefit it holds as well as the impact. If training is required it will be easy to add a few readiness questions to the training evaluation at the end of a training session.

Launch and Support: The launch might only be a communication informing all relevant stakeholders of the “Go Live” of the sprint. Or you could have some promotional collateral done in advance to celebrate the release of the sprint. This could be handed out after the training sessions or through managers. Support for the impacted stakeholders needs to be put into place.

Adoption and Sustainability: Engagement with the project team and users is important as this will form part of your feedback to the sponsor and stakeholders on how to improve the approach for the next sprint. This will also serve as lessons learnt.

In summary, focus your change management efforts around the overall project vision and goals, but your change management activities need to support each sprint, with key learnings applied from each launch to improve the adoption process for the next sprint.