Human beings are typically resistant to change. This resistance often comes from uncertainty, which can generate fear, anxiety, a sense of loss, and skepticism (“here we go again”). If an organization has had previous change initiatives which were unsuccessful, this creates a climate of doubt and resistance. Management needs to be aware of the change climate in an organization prior to beginning a major change initiative such as a process improvement program.
A Process Improvement effort will be most successful if it is treated as an on-going project to improve your overall business viability, not a specific point solution to a temporal or transient business demand. To implement specific changes an organization should use the concepts embodied in the Organizational Process Focus and Organizational Innovation and Deployment Process Areas of the CMMI®: a) continuous process improvement is planned; b) participation in the organization's software process improvement activities is organization wide; c) the organization's processes are improved continuously. These basic principles can be applied no matter what the level of the organization.
Transition strategies are used to facilitate the introduction of process changes by addressing key organizational issues and possible points of resistance. The strategies address eight key issues to be dealt with throughout the entire change process.
Team structure – Establish the team and its structure to plan, implement and sustain the change: sponsor, leadership team, change team, change coach, and transition team.
Leadership – Establish the sponsorship development activity and learning organization environment for achieving and sustaining the desired change.
Education and training – Establish the education and training to provide stakeholders the knowledge and skills of methods, tools and processes integral to the change initiative.
Measures – Establish the business value, process, and readiness measures that should be tracked and monitored to enable learning and measure progress, as well as results. (These issues will be dealt with in the next article in this series.)
Business and technology integration – Determine the desired changes in business performance and integrate the technology-driven changes that will support it, such as systems life cycle, project management, or new tools.
Performance management – Identify the desired behaviors and performance results for the change; establish the reinforcement mechanisms for each behavior (positive and negative) to institutionalize the change.
Relationship management – Determine how the change will impact your customer or supplier and establish a win-win business relationship for working together.
Communications – Establish communications for the change within all levels of the organization.
New products and services from the SEI include the new certification for SCAMPISM Lead Appraisers and the CMMI constellation for services (CMMI-SVC) which was released in March 2009.