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Solution Design & Integration · Delivery and Change

Change management

Reading35mLesson 2 of 3 in this module

Plan the people side of go-live: stakeholders, training, communications and a cutover runbook.

Why it matters

Projects rarely fail because the software does not work. They fail because people do not use it, use it wrongly, or quietly keep their old spreadsheet. Organisational change management is the planned work of helping people move from the old way to the new one. Cutover is the planned work of moving the systems. A systems analyst often owns or contributes to both, because they understand the processes that are changing.

The core idea: people move through stages

Many models describe how individuals accept change. Prosci's ADKAR model is widely used and easy to apply. A person needs:

  1. Awareness of why the change is happening.
  2. Desire to take part and support it.
  3. Knowledge of how to work in the new way.
  4. Ability to actually do it on the job.
  5. Reinforcement so the change sticks.

Training only delivers Knowledge. If store staff do not understand why the old customer database is going (Awareness) or think the CRM will slow down checkout (Desire), training alone will not work. Kotter's eight-step model is another common framework, aimed more at leading change across a whole organisation.

The change plan

  • Change impact assessment: for each group, what changes in their daily work. For example, store associates now look customers up by phone at the till; marketing builds segments in the CRM instead of spreadsheets; customer service sees loyalty history.
  • Stakeholder and sponsor plan: a visible senior sponsor, plus change champions (respected staff in each store who get early access and help colleagues).
  • Communications plan: who hears what, when and from whom. Messages come from managers people trust, start early, explain why, and repeat.
  • Training plan: role-based, close to go-live, hands-on in a training environment, with quick reference guides at the till.
  • Support plan: extra help in the first weeks (floor walkers, a dedicated support channel), and measures of adoption.

Cutover planning

The cutover plan (or runbook) is an hour-by-hour list of every task needed to switch from old to new:

Harbor Outfitters CRM cutover, Saturday 18:00 to Sunday 20:00

T-14d  Go/no-go criteria agreed; final rehearsal passed and timed
T-2d   Communications: stores told old database becomes read-only Sat 18:00
Sat
18:00  Freeze: old customer database set to read-only          (DB admin)
18:30  Final extract of customers and points                    (Migration lead)
19:00  Transform and load into CRM                              (Migration lead)
02:00  Reconciliation report: counts and points totals          (Analyst)
03:00  Go/no-go checkpoint 1: reconciliation accepted?          (Business owner)
Sun
08:00  Switch POS and web shop integrations to CRM              (Integration lead)
10:00  Smoke tests: 10 scripted transactions in two test stores (UAT leads)
12:00  Go/no-go checkpoint 2 (point of no return)               (Sponsor)
Mon
07:00  Floor walkers in all stores; hypercare channel open      (Support lead)

Every task has an owner, a start time, a duration and a dependency. The plan includes go/no-go checkpoints with written criteria, and a rollback plan: the exact steps to switch back to the old system if a checkpoint fails, and the latest time a rollback is still possible. After go-live, a hypercare period (often two to four weeks) gives fast support and daily defect reviews before normal support takes over.

Measuring adoption

Decide in advance how you will know the change worked: percentage of sales with a loyalty lookup, number of old spreadsheets still in use, support tickets per store per day, staff confidence survey scores. If adoption stalls in one store, the champion and manager follow up.

Common mistakes

  • Treating change as a single training session the week before go-live.
  • Communications that announce what is happening but never explain why.
  • Cutover plans with no owners, no timings or no rollback.
  • Switching off the old system with no read-only access for look-ups.
  • Declaring success at go-live instead of after adoption is measured.

Quick recap

  • ADKAR: awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, reinforcement; training covers only knowledge.
  • Plan impacts, sponsors and champions, communications, role-based training and support.
  • A cutover runbook lists every task with owner and time, go/no-go checkpoints, rollback and hypercare.

Try it

In the Do tab you write a training plan and a cutover runbook.

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