Change Management meets Agile, how does that work?

The Project Management landscape is changing quickly as companies increasingly combine Agile and Change Management.
How do you combine these project and initiative-level approaches? Let us explore how.

Agile and Change Management follow different rhythms

Both Agile and Change Management are project or initiative-led approaches used in managing projects. The increasing adoption of Agile in project management has prompted Prosci® to study how Change Management can (best?) support it. Both require adaptation when introduced into an existing environment.

Managing a project with Agile

Agile is an approach used by project managers to obtain better results for their projects by favoring incremental changes, collaboration and interactive work in a sequence of sessions known as Sprints. In Agile, stages of a project are cyclical and iterative.

Plan

Design

Build

Test & Review

Traditional Change Management (within the waterfall approach)

The application of processes and tools to manage the people side of change from a current state to a new future state so that the desired results of the change (and expected return on investment) are achieved.

The milestones of a Change Management project follow a linear and sequential flow.

Business Need Concept and Design Implementation Post Implementation

Awareness
Desire
Knowledge
Ability
Reinforcement

Agile and Waterfall at a glance

Agile approach

A continuous improvement, project approach
Centered originally around software development
Iterative
Emphasizes adaptation along the project lifecycle

Waterfall approach

Consists of linear phases and requires preliminary planning
Typically used for types and sizes of projects
Sequential
Emphasizes milestones to determine if a project is moving forward

The Agile approach, explained

Let’s take a deeper look at Agile, whose genesis dates back to 2001, when seventeen software developers met at a resort in Utah to discuss lightweight development methods and then define the Agile Manifesto based on:

Four main values

Individuals & interactions over processes & tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

Twelve principles

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in the development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
Simplicity — the art of maximizing the amount of work not done — is essential.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

The Agile approach creates a new mindset

In a complex and uncertain world,

issues must be divided into small pieces and performed by cross-functional autonomous teams working in short iterations, to get an immediate feedback from customers and end users.

The challenges of Agile

Agile certainly appears to be an improvement on previous project management approaches, but still:

It's often top-down
It pays insufficient attention to the individuals affected by the change

In such a scenario, we cannot keep doing what we have been doing and expect different results.

The whole organization has to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset, with the entire organization re-imagined as an interactive network, not a top-down bureaucracy with just a few teams implementing Agile.

The Agile approach is driven by

Customer centricity

Users and customers hold the key, organizations need to be passionate about creating instant and personal value, anywhere, anytime and on any device.

Innovation

Agile can help innovation because it too is iterative. Companies continuously check the value of their activities and focus on a collective leadership and distributed decision-making.

Nurturing culture

Organizations build and support entrepreneurial mindsets and behavior throughout their activities. This type of culture will help using Agile be more successful.

Creativity

Agile can release more creativity. People use their talents in new and exciting ways to benefit others economically and personally.

Performance Focus

An organization with a performance focus can embody that in their Agile approach, because Agile drives measurement and measurement is the food of performance.

How do Agile and Change Management interact?

Let's now consider the relationship between the two approaches or, more accurately, the circumstances in which you will introduce Agile.

There are three possible scenarios:

When you do not use either Change Management or Agile;
When you already use Agile and want to introduce Change Management;
When you already use Change Management and wish to introduce Agile.

Prosci® Research focuses on two situations:

Introducing Agile to the organization
Introducing Change Management with an Agile approach

Severity of resistance to the transition to Agile

No resistance 13%
Not very severe 7%
Slightly severe 20%
Moderately severe 47%
Very severe 13%

Prosci® Research of Change Management and Agile shows that when the move to Agile was managed poorly, there was greater resistance to Agile overall, and more obstacles are encountered when attempting to integrate Change Management in Agile projects.

%: percentage of respondents

Source: Prosci® Research of Change Management and Agile

Introducing Agile to the Organization

This degree of resistance supports our realization that introducing Agile necessitates Change Management.

Specifically the largest adaptations made to accommodate Agile were identified as:

Focus on iterative Change Management
Redefine success measures
Test new approaches

Driving successful change in an Agile environment

Agile’s iterative development nature drives Change Management to:

Also become iterative
Create adaptive, living, plans
Require more upfront work
Work to increase the pace of change

And what we have discovered with our clients is that:

The Communication load increases
The need for sponsor involvement increases
Change Management work becomes more widespread (more CM team members)
Helps integrate the people side with the technical side of changes
Takes more attention from all levels

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
S. Hawking

The Agile approach to Change Management

Let’s try to merge the graphical depictions shown at the start of our exploration, to see how Agile and Change Management interact.

Awareness and Desire

start before the sprints, accompanying the formation of an Epic. Throughout the Epic, an overall Result accompanies the whole process.

Knowledge (Concept and Design)

Ability (Implementation)

Reinforcement (Post Implementation)

Sprint

Overall Reinforcement

About the people side

Contributors

The greatest contributors to successfully managing the people-side in an Agile environment are:

Early engagement of the change
Consistent communication
Senior leader engagement
Achievement of early wins

Obstacles

Consistent obstacles to success identified when applying Change Management in an Agile environment were:

Lack of understanding of CM
Organizational resistance to Agile
High volume of incremental change
Increased pace
Middle manager resistance

Driving successful change with Agile

The 3 main actions that you need to take when managing a change in an Agile environment are:

First

Educate the organization on Agile
Second

Engage sponsors more effectively
Third

Test new approaches

With 7 top contributors

Prosci® research has identified the key drivers of successful Change Management and how, according to their research, you need to modify them in order to effectively accommodate Agile.

Change Management practice areas evaluated

Sponsorship
Structured approach
Dedicated resources
Integration with project management
Employee engagement
Communications
Manager engagement

Prosci® has also identified the key Change Management interventions to deploy successful change with Agile: Training, Resistance management and Reinforcement.

The research has also highlighted the Change Management practice areas that are most frequently adapted for Agile, as shown in the graph below.

Areas most frequently adapted in Agile environments

Integrated project management 70%
Communication 68%
Structured approach 66%
Delivering training 61%
Engaging employees 60%
Engaging managers 59%
Sponsorship 54%
Dedicated resources 52%
Reinforcing the change 48%
Managing resistance 42%