Navigating the Fog: The Challenges of Conducting Change Impact Assessments

Welcome back, change champions! Today, let's chart a course through the often-murky waters of Change Impact Assessments (CIA). Just like a captain navigating a ship through a foggy night, conducting a CIA comes with challenges that can make or break the journey of organisational change.

1. Racing Against Time 

Time is a luxury that we often can't afford, especially when navigating the rough seas of change. In many projects, especially those adhering to agile methodologies, the pace can feel like sailing a speedboat close to rocky shores. The need for quick decisions often means our CIA might get a cursory glance rather than a deep dive, leading to overlooked details that later emerge as colossal icebergs.

Prioritise and Plan

Allocate specific, protected times for CIA activities in your project schedule. This ensures that assessment doesn't get sidelined by other urgent tasks.

Simplify the Process

Use templates and tools that streamline gathering and analysing impact data. This reduces the time required and helps maintain focus on critical areas.

Focus on key impacts

If you have a fairly good knowledge of the business you are impacting, focus your impact assessment on those key areas.

Use your crew

Remember you don’t have to do this work on your own; you have a whole crew on your ship – and not just those in the project and/or change roles, use key people across the business to get the impact assessment done, guide them, show them how, run workshops, create templates they can complete so you can work fast.

2. Sailing in Agile Waters 

With their sprints and quick iterations, agile projects are like navigating a river rapid; they demand swift, responsive manoeuvres. This environment can make comprehensive CIA seem like anchoring in the middle of a storm - slowing down feels counterintuitive. Yet, without this anchoring, we might miss adjusting our sails to the wind changes, leaving our change efforts vulnerable to sudden gusts.

Integrate CIA with Sprints

Treat impact assessments as a sprint deliverable. This ensures they are revisited and refined in each cycle, keeping pace with agile developments.

Continuous Feedback Loop

Encourage ongoing feedback from stakeholders to update the CIA in real-time, which aligns well with the agile principle of iterative improvement.

3. Peering into the Mist: Unclear Future State Operating Models 

What's more challenging than navigating without a map? Trying to assess impacts when the destination (or future state operating model) is as clear as a foggy morning. When the end state of our organisational structure, processes, or technology is undefined, conducting a CIA can feel like guessing the winds without a compass, making it challenging to prepare for what lies ahead.

Incremental Clarity

Work with leadership to clarify aspects of the future state in stages rather than all at once. This can be aligned with the phased deliveries of the project.

Scenario Planning

Use scenario planning to explore various possible future states. This helps prepare flexible impact assessments that can adapt as more information becomes available.

4. Charting Unfamiliar Seas: Organisations New to Change 

For organisations where change management is as unfamiliar as new continents were to ancient mariners, introducing CIA is like teaching navigation by the stars. It's crucial, yet daunting. The lack of a change management culture can mean that our CIA efforts are seen more as a mythical sea creature than a critical navigational tool.

Education and Communication

Run workshops and training sessions to educate the organisation on the value and process of the CIA. Highlighting case studies and past successes can demystify the process and gain buy-in.

Change Champions

Identify and empower change champions within the organisation who can advocate for the importance of thorough CIAs and guide their peers through the change process.

5. Ghost Ships: The Curse of the Undocumented Current State 

Finally, let's talk about the ghost ships - the undocumented or poorly understood current state of operations. Without a clear understanding of where we are starting from, any CIA is like trying to spot other ships in a thick fog. This lack of visibility can lead to miscalculations, overlooked needs, and, ultimately, a course that leads to the treacherous waters of resistance and frustration.

Document and Analyse

Begin your project with a phase dedicated to documenting the current state if it isn’t already known. This may involve workshops, interviews, and process mapping sessions. Use that crew again to help get this done.

Shadow the impacted teams

If you can, make sure you go out and sit with the people performing the roles. This can be an effective way to see what is really happening, get past what is documented and see the actual work people are doing.

Setting Sail with Confidence 

Despite these challenges, conducting effective CIAs is not just possible; it's essential. Like a skilled captain with a trusted crew, we can navigate these challenges by allocating more time upfront for planning, adapting our methods to agile environments, pressing for clarity on future states, educating our teams on the importance of a CIA, and documenting our current operations diligently.

So, fellow navigators, as we set sail on our change initiatives, let's embrace these challenges not as obstacles but as opportunities to refine our navigation skills and steer our organisations toward successful transformations. Stay the course, adjust your sails, and remember: every fog clears, revealing new horizons.