Practical Change Management for IT Projects

Emily Carr

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781783000319
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Business Skills
• Index: Computer Science

Transform your IT project and make change stick with this step-by-step guide.In today's fast-paced world of change, companies expect you to do more, with less. Drawing on over a decade of Change Management experience as a consultant with Fortune 500 companies including IBM and NCR, Emily Carr shares the secrets to making change happen smoothly.If your company is like most, the number one reason that projects have failed over the years don't have to do with technology. They have to do with people. People didn't like the new technology. People weren't trained properly on the change. People hadn't received adequate communications and didn't understand the change. Sound familiar?Project teams rarely forget to work on the technology, but they often forget to work with the people, and no matter how amazing your new technology is, it's useless unless people use it efficiently. This book will help you focus on the people.Packed with templates, checklists, and real-life examples, this user-friendly guide will provide you with the insights and guidance of an expert consultant, for a fraction of the price. You'll follow a clearly laid out path from Change Management novice to confident and prepared change manager. You'll be introduced to the Five Pillars of Change: Sponsorship, Stakeholder Management, Communication, Training, and Organization Design. You will work step-by-step through templates in each pillar to build and run a comprehensive Change Management plan tailor-made to your project and organization.

Practical Change Management for IT Projects

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Practical Change Management for IT Projects

Copyright © 2014 Impackt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Impackt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Impackt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Impackt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: March 2014

Production Reference: 1050314

Published by Impackt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK

ISBN 978-1-78300-030-2

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Cover Image by Artie Ng (<[email protected]>)

Credits

Author

Emily Carr

Reviewers

Manavendra S. Gokhale

Brenda Kerton, MA Leadership

Commissioning Editor

Danielle Rosen

Copy Editors

Tanvi Bhatt

Maria Gould

Ameesha Green

Faisal Siddiqui

Project Coordinator

Venitha Cutinho

Proofreader

Maria Gould

Production Coordinator

Melwyn D'sa

Cover Work

Melwyn D'sa

Content Development Editor

Sweny M. Sukumaran

About the Author

Emily Carr has been working as a Change Management consultant for over a decade. As a consultant, she has worked with Fortune 500 companies to develop and execute successful Change Management, communications, and training programs for large-scale business and IT projects. These programs have had global reach across the United States, Australia, India, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Emily is also the author of the popular Change Management blog, Practical Change Management.

I would like to thank my husband, Ben, for all of his support throughout the writing of this book.

About the Reviewers

Manavendra S. Gokhale is a management professional with 24 years' experience with 17 years at CEO level. He has headed companies across multiple verticals, and has strong leadership and team building capabilities. He has worked on MIS systems and Analytics, and evaluated people at various levels in companies across the hierarchy.

He is a visiting faculty member to various well known Business schools, and teaches various subjects across functions and general management. He has had exposure as a Corporate Consultant for eight years and has conducted multiple corporate workshops.

He has used IT extensively in his corporate activities coupled with strong networking skills due to working across verticals and engagements in India and other countries.

He defines progress as making things easier and enabling people to reach their milestones by helping them avoid the problems they face and help them learn by sharing experiences.

Brenda Kerton, MA Leadership, has over 25 years of experience in leadership, business, and information technology. Her strengths are strategic analysis, change leadership, and aligning business with IT. Her passion is the creation of business solutions that respect the people and their work, and truly achieves the benefit opportunities.

Her experience covers a range of the following areas:

• Leadership: Strategies and plans, goal setting, managing, directing, and coaching
• Communications: Public speaking, written research, facilitation, and internal communications
• Management of change: Training, coaching, and planning
• Building individual and team capability: Employee assessment and performance management, professional development planning, coaching and mentoring, and training and training development
• Process analysis and reengineering: Current and target state analysis, redesign plans, and process improvement
• Project management: Product implementation projects, business process change projects, and IT application projects
• Consulting: From large multi-month engagements to small half-day assignments to ongoing phone coaching and support

She is the Principal Consultant and owner of Capability Insights Consulting www.capabilityinsights.com.

Preface

Think about the projects your company has implemented over the years. How many of them were successful? How many of them failed? Now, think about one of the projects that failed. Take a minute to write down the three main reasons it failed:

1. ________________________________________________________________
2. ________________________________________________________________
3. ________________________________________________________________

If your company is like most companies, the reasons you wrote down have little to nothing to do with technology. They concern people. People didn't like the new technology. People weren't trained properly on the change. People hadn't received adequate communications and didn't understand the change. People had been through so many failed change projects in the past that they knew if they just waited long enough, this one would fail too, and they could go back to the old way of doing things.

Sound familiar?

Project teams rarely forget to work on the technology, but they often forget to work with the people, and no matter how amazing your new technology is, it's useless unless people use it efficiently.

This book will help you focus on people. It will walk you step by step through the main aspects of Change Management, so that by the time your new technology is read...

Table of contents

• Practical Change Management for IT Projects