Company A is heading towards a business culture where the request for change is easily dealt with. The request will be judged within a short period of time, and when the request is approved it will be implemented under strict supervision of a change control board. The board will be responsible for deciding whether a request will be rejected or approved, they will monitor the process, and they will be reported by the managers handling the change.
For the second part of the problem, Company A has to create a business structure where asset management is implemented in the daily activities of the company so they will be controlled and managed very carefully. This is again closely monitored by the change management board. The changes which will have to be made in the portfolio management lies for one part in the ‘hands’ of the portfolio management in cooperation with the project management. For the other part the change control board will be responsible.
By implementing these changes the company A will accomplish more efficiency and will prevent itself for making the effort and making mistakes more than once. 5) Plan and prepare for implementation Company A prepared for their changes by strict planning because they believe that “failing to plan is planning to fail”. Company A used a four step model to plan their change: 1. Identify stakeholders and clarify every task, responsibility, and role of all the people involved in the change process. After doing this less mistakes will occur.
2. Specify the change management requirements, know where the request come from and identify them per type of change request so that there will be a clear overview. 3. Design a change management process, gather all the information which is needed or used in the change process. When gathering and defining all this data very accurate it will help to have a very clear overview about where the company is in the change management process and how it is working. Furthermore, flows in the process can be detected in an early stage.
4. Create a change control board, this board will monitor and direct all the requested changes in the right direction keeping the general interest for the company in mind. (optimize planning… ) 6) Implement change First of all, since everyday businesses have to cope with shrinking teams and timelines it is hard to implement the changes which are needed to survive. This is also the case for Company A because a culture need to be created where the need for change within the company is understandable and highly appreciated.
If the team does not understand this it is important that the they are informed and educated about the need for change and also how to manage the changes when they are implemented. Company A gave their team a “process and supporting tool automation” for backing up their change process. (“Integrating change…. “) Next to this, company A started at the very basis with questions like: ‘where does the request for change come from? ‘ and ‘how to manage these requests? ‘. They made a distinction between two different kinds of requests; high level changes (business requirements) and low level changes (functional requirements).
The change control board is reviewing all the requests for change and had to make a decision whether to accept or reject a request within two weeks which will force the board to work quick and efficient. Once the request is accepted the project manager has to create a list of daily activities within the company which have to be changed in order to meet the change criteria. The new tasks will be dedicated to resources with the correct availability and skills. During this stage the whole process is monitored, reviewed and reported on. (“optimize request management… “)
To optimize their asset management the changes they will have to make will be implemented as followed. First, they will start with centralising the storage and labelling all the files. Which makes it very easy to find the files. Second, they are going to use a new software program which will automatically make links between assets, allowing Company A perform real-time impact analysis and send announcements. (“optimize asset… ) For the last process, the project and portfolio management it is essential that the flow of information and need for changes are collected, organised and linked with each other.
In this matter an overview of the complete portfolio is created instead of project by project. To accomplish this, changes in the project management have to be made. When project management decides that new tasks have to be implemented in the process or old tasks have to be removed or changed, they need to make sure that this information is passed on to the portfolio management. They have to organise all these changes and link them with each other. This same routine need to be followed when dealing with resource assignments, work estimations, actual process updates, and metrics like defect rates and state aging.
This will make company A more effective and it will prevent them from making the same mistake twice. These steps will also be monitored by the change control board. When problems occur they will be noticed in an early stage and therefore also dealt with in a early stage. (“Integrate portfolio… “) 7) Review and consolidation As mentioned in the previous chapter, during the whole process of change every step is closely monitored and reviewed by the change control board. When problems seem to occur the change control board will take immediate action to protect the company from failing.
Since the change control board will monitor every step, the problems will be detected in a early stage. By this way of working these beginner problems will not lead to big problems within the change management process. When company A is finished implementing all these changes it will have accomplished more efficiency and they will prevent themselves for making the effort and making mistakes more than once. However, company A has to keep in mind that changes will never stop and while implementing the changes discussed in the report, the need for other changes already arise.
