What is Organizational Change Manager’s role in Information Services?

Information Technology (Information Services) industry downplays change management as the awareness for the need to have systematic change management is very low within the expert teams. I have thought thourgh a change management program using a framework called “3P Change Management Framework” to overcome this challenge for my team.

The systematic deployment of 3P Change Management framework has ensured less or no resistance to change after the service or application is rolled out into the organization, to the targeted end user.


3P Change Management programs have three phases: Pre-Piloting – Piloting – Production phases for application and enhancement roll outs and Pre-Downtime – Downtime and Post-Downtime for infrastructure roll outs.

Process owner engagement, end user information, identification of resistance amongst end users, put “On hold” to roll out if resistance management is not closed 48 hours before the roll out/downtime date, constant communication between stakeholders, end-to-end training for support groups and closing a change program with Product Owner score are the highlights in 3P Change Management Framework (3P CM Framework).

Resistance Management: Key focus

Resistance Management ensures an application or service is introduced into the organization with less than 5% target group resisting a change. Our observation of various change programs show the initial resistance from end users is 70-30 for any change being introduced into their day-today transactions.

End user resistance stems from the following reasons

1. Lack of understanding of ‘why and when’ about a change

2. Lack of understanding benefits for end users

3. Change saturation (overwhelmed by the amount of change being rolled out by IS)

4. Lack of involvement by end users in a change (no participation)

5. Comfortable with the current manual process

3P Change Management team involves the following methods to measure resistance from end users

- Feedback recorded during online awareness session in pre-piloting

- Online feedback recorded from pilot users through intranet
- On call feedback recorded by my team

- One-on-One call with Point Of Contacts from business teams

- ‘Huddle calls’ 24 hours before go-live dates (to check for any last minute resistance)

 Methods used to resolve resistance from end users involve
- Direct-engagement between Process Owner and Resistors- Multiple rounds of resistance management calls

- One-On-One meeting between resistors, Process Owners and Non-IS stakeholders

- Escalation till business heads in case of no-response from resistors for resolution calls

- Ensure Process Owner offers multiple options for end users as resolution

- Ensure resistors select one of the options to close resistance before go-live

- Risk Owner Transfer in case of no-show by resistors

I have a passion for change programs and my four years in organisational change management has given me 100% success with systematic approach to change.

Predictive change management is what I am looking at, in my organisation, to help the Product and Process owners prepare for a change with end users, using a similar change program (s) from the past.