Understanding the Change Management Process: Things to Know

Change management process is the process of planning, implementing, and integrating changes within your organization. This refers to how a company responds to the following changes like implementing new technologies, adjusting existing processes, and shifting organizational hierarchies.

Change is the only constant in today’s competitive and fast-evolving business environment. Every change an organization makes introduces lucrative opportunities, but at the same time, it brings potential risks -

• Lack of desire or commitment to supporting the change
• High level of resistance
• Lack of group and mid-level leadership support
• Lack of stakeholder commitment
• Poor budgeting

An effective and streamlined change management process can help identify these risks and understand which changes to implement.

What is Change Management Process?

It is the process of requesting, evaluating achievability, planning, and implementing changes to a particular system. There are two primary objectives: (a) supporting the change by determining its attainability and (b) facilitating complete traceability of the change. As IT ecosystems and businesses get more complex, more changes and dependencies are needed.

Hence, you need robust change management software that improves risk management, facilitates collaboration & communication between teams, and coordinates changes.

Things You Should Know About Change Management

To practice successful change management, it is first important to understand the context of the change and ensure everyone captures the essence the same way. The change management process typically involves a set of functions, such as capturing change requests, understanding its impact, prioritizing change metrics, and dispositioning. The activities ideally remain similar, whatever the type of change.

However, there are some key differentiators understanding that will help you completely grasp the change management context.

• Understand that there may be multiple change management systems within the organization
  There may be multiple change management systems and processes functioning within your organization at a single point in time. The IT department may have a unique change process for hardware, software, and data. Engineers may require a version change for source code. Project managers might be implementing another system for requirements change.
  
  The scope of integration and communication among different change management processes may vary, but the objective remains the same: managing risks and facilitating successful change. An effective change control management software can help create predictable, enforceable, and repeatable processes that can be scaled for varied change needs and global enterprises.
  
  
• Agile Delivery
  

  Many organizations are now adopting DevOps, Scrum, and Agile methodologies. These delivery methods take a closed-loop and integrated approach during change management to accelerate time-to-value. For instance, DevOps helps create continuous delivery (CD/CI) processes and improvement that helps establish the need for effective integration between software change management processes and supporting systems.

  This will allow application development teams to expedite the process and boost the “speed of business.”

• Data Quality and Automation
  The success and efficiency of change management depend heavily on the degree of automation supporting the process. Manual processes are complex, frustrating, and error-prone. Therefore, automated software for change management can help streamline and speed up the process. Additionally, the quality of data supporting change management plays an integral role in understanding how efficiently the change can grow through the lifecycle.
  
  

• Third-Party Components
  For businesses that use third-party software components or SaaS, some of the biggest challenges in the way of change management are:

  - Managing risks
  - Determining the impact of such change on the IT environment and other systems
  - Understanding the features that come in a build version or package from the supplier

  Understanding the above factors will better grasp the change management system and meet the goals. At the same time, it will help you choose the right enterprise change management software that addresses your needs.

Features to Identify A Reliable Change Management Software

If you are looking for change management software, here are some key features you should consider:

• Flexibility through customization: A custom change management platform helps improve developers’ productivity and accelerate project delivery through flexibility.
• Scalability: As your company grows and brings more changes, you’d need software that scales with your business. Furthermore, it should be able to manage comprehensive testing activities, right from planning to execution or analysis of test results.
• Real-Time Collaboration: The software should be able to automate workflows with an instant notification system that immediately alerts team members when a specific action is required. Improved team collaboration can be achieved by integrating siloed developer processes such as development, testing, analysis, and deployment.

These are just a few things you should keep in mind throughout the change management process. Schedule a demo with HCL Compass, a robust change management software to accelerate, scale, and collaborate on project delivery.