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Sometimes it is hard to imagine the importance and Change of managementHere’s a story about a crazy place near my house. There’s a recycling center not far from my house, and the experience at this recycling center is unlike any recycling center I’ve ever experienced before. While I haven’t experienced enough recycling centers in my life to know what’s standard, the way this place is set up just baffles me. Here’s the experience: When you approach the recycling center, you drive up like you’re at a McDonald’s drive-thru. There’s a guy waiting in front of the recycling bins to collect donations. To actually drop off your recycling, you need to pull up to the building and unload. Sometimes there are a lot of volunteers to help you, sometimes not. Once you’re done unloading, you’re free to leave as long as there’s no other car in front of you. The maximum number of vehicles that can unload at any one time is about three. There’s bound to be a long line behind the unloading vehicles, which can hold up to eight vehicles at a time, and the wait can be as long as twenty minutes. It seems so wasteful and not good for the environment. So many cars are idling, what to do?
I was one of the volunteers at this recycling center, helping to unload cars, and I know why. The center wants to maximize the donations from those who drop off their recycling, and they want to accurately quality assurance By making sure the right recyclables are put into the right bins the first time. This reduces the possibility of lost revenue if one of the buyers rejects a bin because there is too much unsuitable material in it. This is exactly what you are told when you are trained as a volunteer there. There can be other reasons as well.
When I started volunteering at this location, its main center of operations was a semi-permanent building in the form of a large frame tent. When the time came to design a new building for them to move to, it would be an opportunity to change the business process. Eventually, a permanent building was built for this recycling center, per their request. Business ProcessIt is designed to integrate closely with the centre’s current workflow. This means that nothing has to change.
There is no sign of any change at all. From the outside, the building appears to have been constructed in the way they currently do, without regard for foot traffic, customer experience, or even the environment. Now that a permanent structure is in place, there is little possibility of making changes.
Want a faster return? Pre-industrial era Meaning: add more people. I find this inefficient. There is no parallelism in the work. The work is done serially in an assembly line fashion. This drives me crazy.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to be the architect on this project. Long before information technology, architects have been unable to help people move beyond the present and into the future. Architects and IT professionals could probably go to therapy together.
This example illustrates the challenges that businesses face. IT professionals often see inefficient business processes. Clay Christensen Pointedly stated,The Innovator’s Dilemma“Business processes are inherently very resistant to change. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be processes. So when IT departments get a consultation for a software purchase or an internal development project outline, they expect to have a very specific conversation with the requester. This conversation isn’t common. It usually comes in the form of “So what are you trying to achieve?” It stems from the realization that, whether we like to admit it or not, our business processes have evolved based on existing tools. Times have changed, technology has changed, and organizational capabilities (hopefully) have changed. The iron has been cast, and now is the time to strike.
It is not uncommon for the requester to decline this conversation. They work closely with their colleagues and understand the nature of the business. In a sense, they have already had this conversation, so why have it again? My wife and I went through something similar when we were drawing up designs for an extension to our home. My wife was in charge of the project. We had several conversations about what we wanted, she drew up the designs, I gave them credit, and she took the designs to architectSince we had no prior experience, we didn’t know how many iterations we would go through. demand analysis And design it before making the final plan.
Frankly, it would have been terrible if the contractor had built it the way we envisioned it. In talking to the architect, we considered a lot of things that we hadn’t considered. He asked us a lot of questions. At first, it was a bit irritating since we knew nothing about the process. We kind of expected the architect to just turn our sketches into design documents for the contractor. We didn’t expect him to start asking questions. I had to laugh when I realized I was asking for trouble! It took us three months to finalize the design of the extension. Things started later than we thought, and we didn’t settle in until just before the first snow. But the final product was very satisfying. It met our needs.
Presenting a request to IT is no different than the first sketch we submit to an architect. It is simply the starting point for a series of conversations. Business analysts and architects will want to ask many questions. A complete overhaul of existing workflows will prevent an organization from meeting future needs. Are you remediating today’s problems or preparing for tomorrow’s opportunities?
Jerry McLean exist Gartner His method he called “Slow trigger, fast bullet“. While Jerry focuses primarily on the public sector, I think this approach has universal value. While not all change management techniques are created equal, any approach that slows change and includes a significant amount of planning and preparation has considerable value. I am not referring to requirements gathering. I am referring to larger considerations such as understanding the type of change we are seeking for our organization, “What do we want to be able to do? Who do we want to be? Who do we want our customers to be? How are we delivering value today, and is that enough?” There is also budget support and ensuring the ability to make the change itself. This question is the most profound and often overlooked. If your staff is already fully loaded, what can’t be done when staff are involved in telling user stories, testing, etc.? If the old condescending view of professionals once again emerges, the usual response to this question is, “They must try harder.” Your project has failed. Without a doubt, the project will be late, over budget, and fall short of expectations. To be successful, IT departments must have the full support of their colleagues. These colleagues must make adjustments or additional arrangements in their own work to make this happen.
For most types of change (non-disruptive change), there is little advantage in being a first mover (see “The Innovator’s DilemmaThe most important thing is to make the change as correctly as possible and allow for improvements along the way.
Our home was built in 1953. Long before we bought it in 2007, the building had been altered several times based on the needs of the then-occupants. Many of these alterations were not documented because they did not affect the actual built condition. So, once the design was finalized and signed off by the local permitting department, our contractors naturally discovered issues that required changes. One time, our contractor called us in a panic, thinking they had found a pipe full of asbestos. Thankfully, it was just a pile of plaster. We never learned why it was there. These change orders led to adjustments to deadlines and budgets.
This bears a striking resemblance to organizational structure. Like it or not, the manuals on many department shelves are outdated and out of line with how things actually work. Any new employee will tell you that what is written in the manual is what is presented to them by senior staff. Job shadowing is where new employees learn “how things actually work here.”
So when it’s time to buy new software, IT and other departments need to have a series of conversations. Yes, a series of conversations. Because change management is more than just installing software, it’s about organizational change. When software needs to be configured according to business processes, it’s like removing drywall from an old house.
The field labeled “IT” contains a value chain that is similar to the entire building design, construction, and maintenance chain. As any IT professional will be happy to share, technology implementation is actually the easiest part of IT work! Think carefully about how your IT budget is allocated. Are you budgeting for architects, project managers, and analysts? Or do you expect IT personnel (the equivalent of carpenters, electricians, and plumbers) to design and manage the construction of your new home from start to finish?
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