OCM as part of the Business Case

[Former Member]

OCM Practitioners,

We all know how critical effective Organizational Change Management (OCM) is to the success of a project. We also know the earlier in the project OCM is included the better. I am just curious how often you have seen OCM concerns included in the Business Case Analysis as part of the decision criteria for go - no go.

I am looking forward to hearing from you all relative to where in your experience OCM is generally included in the project lifecycle.

Caryl Barclay

Principal OCM Consultant

SAP Business Technology Consulting

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

The drivers of OCM in a project environment include [1] change in the deliverable [2] change the specification [3] the need to enhance the effciency,effectiveness Vs the deliverables [4] scheduling issues like crashing [5] Cost reduction.

The above occur /recur throught the life cycle of the project.Depending upon the project complexity the frequency of occurence /recurrence vary.As much as this we can see the OCM concern being raised at the time of project planning,Milestone review,monitoring,controlling ....OCM is ubiquitous.

In fact the risk impinges much before we had started the project.The risks fashion the way we work and deliver.All the risks cant be foreseen with a reasonable accuracy.Risks upset our plans,money and the base lines,craving the need for increased or change in the resources,change in the schedule,bringing in new testing requirements,change in the metrics.

OCM is needed to address and mitigate the above.The job of the Project Manager is to visualize what the project will be in future [ given the changes] and not to see what it is "as-is" today.The changes are anticipated to happen at any time at any stage of the project ; its management is included at the planning stage itself.

There are 3 types of changes namely Anticipatory,Reactive and crisis.The "Anticipatory" is the proactive thing,a lot of thought process goes in to this from the inception to the closure of the project.

My 2 cents.

Regards

Ramesh.

[Former Member]

How to we get access to the OCM toolkit?

[Former Member]

IMHO, OCM should not be a part of the go-no go decision. Organisations cannot stop the desired change because of the difficulty of executing the change, unless the cost of making a successful change is more than the benefit that one can derive from such change.

However, OCM should be a part of the costing. I have not yet seen that happen. I have not even seen the OCM team being integrated with the Implementation team very tightly.

[Former Member]

I have very rarely seen OCM included in the business case as more than just a box ticking exercise.

In reality, it can easily make 50% of the project cost, but the business case deals with OCM at the level of "We send an email every month to tell people about the project"

It is striking to see, that those organisations most in need of strong OCM pay least attention to it:

these are usually organisations with a very pragmatic culture. SAP ERP is not easily digested by this type of organisation as it usually asks for very clearly defined processes less flexible for users than most systems they are likely to come from. It also doesn't usually allow for incomplete data early in the process to be completed as required later on. So, it's the most pragmatic organisations, who are facing some of the biggest change challenges when moving to SAP ERP.

On the other hand, these organisations are not likely to do an OCM plan before the project. They are used to just wing it and change management, in their opinion, is for those faint of heart anyway...

[Former Member]

I would personally like to see OCM / Knowledge Transfer part of not only the business case, but of the RFP and of the implementation contract to vendors.

In my opinion this should be an outcome based measure with some real penalty to the vendor who fails to deliver in this area. The following excerpt is from a recent article I wrote on the topic of knowledge transfer:

To avoid [vendor failure of knowledge transfer], your vendor contract might include a provision where you commit to the number of resources and time (client staffing levels) and the vendor is required to reach a point of operational independence within 2 (or 3, or whatever number) months of go-live.  Define operational independence as the client resourceu2019s ability to troubleshoot and resolve transaction problems within the scope of the transactions that are implemented.  Also, the terms of your agreement might spell out that as of u201Cxu201D date, the vendor agrees to support all client resources at u201Cyu201D discounted rate (say 50% of the project rate) until operational independence is achieved. 

This is from "A Cautionary Tale about Knowledge Transfer" posted on my site at, http://www.r3now.com/modules.php?name=news&file=article&sid=15

Bill Wood - President

R3Now Consulting

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