Business Change:

• How to reach the strategic objectives for your programme
• How to ensure the success of the programme delivery
• Control the programme delivery and success
• Control the programme budget

Pre-Change Strategy analysis:

• Produce and Review your Business SWOT analysis
• Review the business models of your selected change partners
• Decide if you want to control your programme or allow a 3rd party to control it
• You need to trust your 3rd parties and business delivery partners

Strategy planning:

• Select a delivery leadership team with the appropriate skills and experience
• Identify a structure of experienced delivery team members that will prevent silos
• Identify the specific skills needed
• Identify and allocate team members based on their experience, expertise and business domain knowledge 
• Business Context:
  • Vision – what is your business future vision
  • Mission – what is your business mission
  • Objectives – what are the business objectives you want to achieve
• Business change alignment to context:
  • Strategy – what is your strategy to achieve your business objectives
  • Tactics – what tactics are you going to apply to achieve your business objectives
  • Application – impact analysis and implementation plan to meet objectives 
  • Structure – of organisation, processes and business units
  • Define – Target Operating Model

Strategy Planning Outcomes:

• Have a defined set of business objectives
• Define specific metrics to measure
• Be transparent to everyone in the organisation
• Define the Target Operating Model
• Define the Organisational skills matrix
• Define the project/programme roadmap
• Have a clear understanding of the skills and capabilities of the individuals and the teams you have employed for the programme
• Delivery partners must provide “added value” and highly skilled team members, (accepting low-level skills from any partners, will compromise your programme and organisation’s reputation)
• Business change implementation plan

Business Change Planning Outcome:

• Retain full control of your programme
• Validate the skills of any partners resources and hold them to account 
• Review the programme progress and value provided by each individual on the programme
• Update your shareholders on a 6 monthly basis with the progress and failures
• Shareholders need to know how the company is “Investing” money – this is part of the checks and balances
• Have the integrity to stop the programme if needed

The analysis strategy:

Why a business change is needed?

• Understand the reason “WHY” the business change is needed
• Understand the customer’s perspective of your business services and products
• Something to keep in mind – you need your customers more than they need you
• Customers vote with their feet and their wallets
• Without customers, you have no business

When is a business change needed?

• Is there a change in your specific market, products, or services domain
• Is there a change in customer tastes or needs for your products or services
• Have your competitors innovated faster and better than you
• Have you decided you are going to preempt and lead the industry change
• Are your systems and operating processes outdated and in need of reinvention/replacing

What type of business change is needed?

• Streamline customer experience
• New or upgraded technology is needed to future proof your business and bring your systems into a new era in your industry
• Are you upgrading or providing new products and services for your market

Who is impacted by the business change?

• Your customers
• Regulators in a regulated industry
• Government departments
• Industries that you provide services to
• Partners and third parties that provide services to your business
• Your business partners
• Your shareholders

Where in the business is the change needed?

• Business locations – international and local
• Business Units – business operating model
• Business Product and Service lines

How will the change be made successfully?

• Identify the success factors
• Ensure the change strategy is not compromised by looking for cheap, quick options
• Select the change delivery team members that have the skills needed
• All individual team members including individual members of any partners need to have their skills validated
• High-level analysis needs to be done upfront even if you decide on an Agile programme – you need a good quality roadmap
• Delivery plans need to be implemented after the high-level analysis is complete
• Ensure you have a robust plan for a “Way of working” which ensures
  
  • all team members have the correct skill level  
  • the requirements will be implemented at the highest quality technically and evidenced
  • the quality assurance of the technical functional and non-functional changes will also be of the highest quality and evidenced

What do you need to consider for your next steps?

• Analyse the business domain, the current processes, systems and business performance
• Define and document the business need for change, the change objectives and the change strategy

Analyse the business models of any delivery partners before hiring them:

• How do they make their money – their financial motivation
• What are their individual team member skill levels – have these been validated by the programme
• What risks do they create for your programme – Consider a “Risk / Reward” contract and ensure they are well defined with a specific behaviour

Planning the change delivery has multiple stages:

• Documented change delivery skills needed and the timeline they are to be brought onto the programme
• Whether the delivery method is; Sequence (waterfall), Iterative or Agile, they all must have business objectives, benefits and business impact analysis in place.

If the team members each have the right experience and skills and business domain knowledge, this will ensure a greater chance of programme success ….   and vice versa.