A change impact is a potential consequence of a change initiative. Impacts can be positive or negative and will typically require a mitigating action in order to make the overall initiative a success.
The Business Change Management team assigned to the Project will need to engage with different areas of the business to identify the Impacts of your change initiative. Typically, this should occur by analysing the impact of moving from the current state (the ‘as-is’), to the target state (the ‘to-be’). Plans to engage should always be sanctioned by Project / Programme Leadership and with the backing of Business Sponsorship.
Identifying Impacts
As Change Impacts are identified, they should be added to Insight.
Impacts can be identified through many different mediums, for example: business impact workshops, interviews, surveys or one-on-one discussions. Identification and documentation of impacts should be facilitated by the Business Change Management Team, with input from Business Experts, impacted stakeholders, Subject Matter Experts and experts within the Project (often Functional/Technical Consultants).
Impacts must be aligned to stakeholders and business areas in order to target actions.
Impacts are split into three areas:
People: any changes that directly impact people or the way the organisation is structured, e.g. roles, operating model, skills, headcount.
Process: any changes that impact the way people operate business processes, e.g. approval requirements, new processes, ways of working changes.
Technology: any changes that impact the way people use technology within the organisation, e.g. new system, updated functionality, new data requirements.
Tracking Impacts
Over the course of a project, Change Impacts will naturally evolve. It is important to keep Impacts up to date to ensure appropriate mitigating Actions remain in place. Updates can include:
Adding notes
Updating impacted Business Areas and Stakeholders
Identifying additional mitigating Actions
High Level Change Impacts
High Level Change Impacts can be used in two different ways:
1 – to capture a very high level impact that a user can subsequently breakdown into more granular Impacts as they learn more information. For example: high level impact called ‘Supply Chain Changes’ can signal an area of impact with many specific impacts grouped underneath that heading.
2 – As a way to group many detailed impacts, for example, if you wanted to group together a range of impacts captured that relate to the finance workstream, you could create a High Level Impact and assign many impacts into that grouping.