Major changes within an organization can be difficult. Furthermore, if you ask a bunch of managers how to ensure a successful transformation, each will probably have his or her own experiences and opinions.
When it comes to change, everyone has an opinion, including rabbits bearing cake, so be ready.
What Is Problem and Change Management?
Problem and change management facilitates transformation within an organization. The change may be from a problematic state to a properly-functioning state, or it may be a change from one way of doing things to another based on a perceived opportunity. Major changes may be required due to external factors, like changes in law, changes in society, or threats from competitors. In these cases, change is necessary to remain competitive.
Change may also come about by choice, with the implementation of a new method of accomplishing certain tasks or a new system that’s planned and deployed systematically. This is a more anticipatory change that may be due to internal events or the perception of opportunities that will arise as a result of making the change.
What Factors Influence the Success of Transformative Changes?
Four important factors can affect whether implementation of a systematic change is successful:
- How much time is necessary to complete the change
- The amount of time between change project reviews
- The number of people required to execute the change and their abilities
- Buy-in from senior management as well as non-management employees
The implementation of change for its own sake, or because an executive returns from a conference having been converted to the latest managerial fad, won’t be successful without attention to the factors listed above.
How Is Problem or Change Management Supposed to Work?
Hint: not like this.
Change management is how organizations get their arms around the change process, mapping out how the change is to take place, estimating the impact of change, and attempting to maintain employee productivity throughout the change process. When change is managed deliberately, it is more likely to adhere to scheduling targets to achieve the goals for which it was implemented in the first place.
What Does Problem and Change Management Software Do?
Change management software helps organizations identify problems or necessary changes. It also helps people record, track, and report on the change as it’s happening. Change management software allows stakeholders to create new change requests, estimate impact, and choose the right priority level for the change, ensure that changes stay on track, and identify specific parts of the overall change that are overdue.
Changes can be linked to specific tasks in order to chart progress, too. With great problem and change management software, the process of change can be less painful and have an easier time staying on track.
Effective project managers want to know at the end of a specific time period — whether a day, week, or month — which changes have been successfully implemented and which remain to be accomplished. Change management software formalizes the procedures for identifying problems, as well as categorizing, investigating, and resolving them. Your organization’s change management software should allow submission of requests for change, send change requests to those who can authorize (or deny) the requests, while keeping impact on day-to-day operations at a minimum.
When an Organization Has Great Problem and Change Management Software
Great problem and change management software helps you accomplish the objectives listed above. It’s also for documenting changes, temporary workarounds, and solutions. Software should offer insights through use of tools like trend analysis so that problems can be detected early and solved before they cause major headaches.
Samanage, a trusted provider of IT service management software, includes problem and change management features that let your organization handle changes so that changes don’t end up handling you. Samanage allows you to detect problems, plan changes, and implement solutions so that changes are beneficial while minimizing risks and hassles during the change process.
Samanage believes that problem and change management tools are an important part of IT service management, and includes these tools along with great IT asset management and service desk tools that keep business running optimally, whatever the circumstances.
Photo Credits: Sicha Pongjivanich / freedigitalphotos.net, Danilo Rizzuti / freedigitalphotos.net
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