Change Management Methodologies
The Absolute Eight Success Factors

What about change management methodologies? How well does your organization support them? Here's a brief overview of the absolute eight success factors that are important in managing change.

1. Establish a Sense of Urgency. If people can see this change is directly linked to a compelling business need rather than something arbitrary then they will give it much more support.
   1. Can you identify what factors are driving this need for change?
   2. Can they be linked to business challenges and customers?
   3. How great is the cost of staying the same vs the cost of this potential change?
2. Clarify and Share the Need for Change. Leaders must paint the same picture of this change throughout the organization and at all levels.
   1. Can you spread the sense of urgency down through the organization?
   2. Can you establish the people, the process, and the technology to make this happen?
3. Increase Change Capability. Stakeholders and leaders need to have the confidence in their abilities to effect change.
   1. Have you established a framework within the organization to manage the change process?
   2. How well have you learned from past change processes to ensure that you improve and correctly manage change?
   3. Have you developed a good learning and professional development environment?
4. Establish a Communications Process. When an organization shares change information at all levels it helps to dispel rumors, fear, lies, and inaccurate, misleading information.
   1. Do you hold leaders accountable for communications?
   2. Do you encourage two-way communications?
5. Involve All Stakeholders. Stakeholder involvement throughout the entire change process is critical to the success of achieving these changes.
   1. Are stakeholders involved in problem solving?
   2. Do you keep stakeholders informed of the change status?
   3. Do you accept and process the feedback from the stakeholders?
   4. Are the right resources involved throughout the change process?
6. Show Leadership at all Levels. Effective change management means good leadership with good leadership skills. Cascading change leadership must be developed and maintained at multiple levels within the organization.
   1. Have you identified leadership roles and behaviors required?
   2. Have you established clear accountability to fulfill these responsibilities?
   3. Have you built strategies for key people involved in managing the change process?
7. Optimize Project Integration. Leadership must set clear priorities, define roles and responsibilities, and adjust performance goals to minimize the risk of disruption.
   1. How well do you fully integrate people, processes and technology?
   2. How well does the group anticipate internal and external events that may impact change?
   3. How well do you manage implementation plans?
8. Evaluate Organizational Performance. Change management impacts people and requires the redefinition of roles and responsibilities. It may require revising the competencies for these roles, including skills and knowledge.
   1. Do you foster an environment where behavior is developed, measured, rewarded and modeled?
   2. Do you reinforce and sustain desired performance?

Why Change Management?

If you're embarking on IT project outsourcing the key is to follow consistent and accepted project change management methodologies to minimize risks and thus ensure the success of your IT projects.

Enforcing these best-practice change management methodologies at all levels of projects fosters a discipline of planning, execution, progress tracking and contingency planning.

The Project Management Institute is a well recognized institution for establishing these best practices, and for sponsoring training and certification programs for its members.

Many organizations are now requiring that their internal staff and IT outsourcers have the certification that comes with training offered by the Project Management Institute.

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