Managing change and transition is the responsibility of the managers and Executives involved in that change. They must have an awareness that change has to be managed, that people have to be communicated with openly and honestly and that resistance has to be sought out, listened to and responded to appropriately. This is especially the case if a change is on a scale that is significant enough to affect the organization as a whole. The Management Board and Executive must ensure that there are adequate connections and controls throughout the organization to alert them to the barriers and to facilitate the transition to its goal.
A clear, strategic vision coming from the Management Board and/or Executive is imperative to drive and maintain the change.
5.1.1 Service Transition’s Role in Organizational Change
Organizational change is always a challenge. Factors that drive successful change initiatives at the organization level include:
• Leadership for the change
• Organization adoption
• Governance process
• Organization capabilities
• Business and service performance measures
• A strong communication process with regular opportunity for staff feedback
Although Service Transition is not accountable for the overall management of business and technical change, the Service Transition process owner of manager is a key stakeholder and needs to be proactive in reporting issues and risks to the change leaders, e.g. when the volume of changes may impact Service Operation’s ability to keep the services running.
Organizational adoption is a subset of Change Management practice. It typically happens at two levels: individual and organizational. It is important to understand the culture of the organizations and the people involved. This will often be quite diverse across different cultures, business units, geographies and including:
• Business culture – this may be different depending on the industry, geography, etc.
• Culture of customer organization(s)
• Culture of service provider/IT organization
• Culture of supplier organization(s)
• Individual personalities, especially of senior managers and change champions
Cultural and organization assessment and change design are the responsibility of strategy and design. However, most significant Service Transitions will have an effect on working practices and so require a change in the behavior and attitudes of many teams and stakeholder groups.
Understanding the organizational change elements of a transition is therefore vital. The assessment of the likely risks and success is an important element of the transition as a whole.
Service Transition will be involved early in the lifecycle to ensure that these aspects are assessed and incorporated into the design and build of the organizational change.
Service Transition must be actively involved in changing the mindsets of people across the lifecycle to ensure they are ready to play their role in Service Transition. These people will include:
• Service Transition staff
• Customers
• Users
• Service Operations staff
• Suppliers
• Key stakeholders
Service Transition will focus on simple measures at any one time to ensure there is consistency in the implementation of the changes. For example, Service Transition would be interested in helping people to:
• Understand the need for knowledge and effective knowledge transfer
• Understand the importance of making decisions at the right speed/within the appropriate time
• Understand the need to complete and review configuration baselines in a timely manner
• Apply more effective risk assessment and management methods for Service Transition
• Follow the deadlines for submitting changes and releases
Service Design will perform the assessment of the capability and capacity of the IT organization to transition the new or changed services. Service Transition has a quality assurance role to check that the organization and stakeholders are ready for the change and it will raise any issues and risks related to organizational change that are identified, e.g. during testing, pilots, deployment and early life support.
Service Transition is also responsible for ensuring that the organizational change happens according to the plans, that the change is still relevant in current circumstances and that the organizational change delivers the predicted organization, capabilities and resources. This will involve checking that changes are being adopted, e.g. that a critical mass of customers, users and Service Operations staff accept the change and make a personal commitment to implementing it.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that once a ‘critical mass’ of around 70% of affected people have accepted the change into their normal way of working, the change can safely be held as established behavior. If the adoption rate is lower, then a significant change exists that an organization might revert to the ‘old ways’. The actual figure will be greatly influenced by the degree of staff involvement with a particular change, e.g. a few key staff can deliver a disproportionately major influence for acceptance or rejection.
Achieving successful Service Transition requires organized, competent and well-motivated people to build, test, deploy and operate the service. Successful Service Transitions rely on changing the organization and people and it is important to focus on such aspects as competency assessment and development, recruiting, skills development, knowledge transfer, team building, process improvements and resource deployment. If there is a gap in capability then Service
5.1.2 Understanding the Organizational Culture
For successful Service Transition, an organization needs to determine the underlying values and drivers that enable effective management of change. Each organization and combination of organizations is different, so the Service Transition approach to change is determined, in part, by the culture and so may vary across the organization.
Organizational culture is the whole of the ideas, corporate values, beliefs, practices and expectations about behavior and daily customs that are shared by the employees in an organization. Culture can support an implementation or it can be the source of resistance.
When performing Service Transition activities it is important to gain an understanding of the type of culture currently existing in the organization and how this is likely to be affected by any proposed changes. Conversely, it is equally important to understand the effect current culture may have as a ‘barrier’ to realizing change. Examples of key questions to be posed to help identify culture are shown below. These questions are useful when reviewing the Service Strategy and Service Design deliverables.
Cultural Aspect Question
Language Is there a common language or shared language(s)? Does the language inhibit and reinforce boundaries or facilitate effective change and knowledge transfer? Is the organizational language style mostly formal or informal?
Change Does the organization appear to resist change or is it constantly evolving?
Communication What are the preferred modes of communication? What is the content and style of internal communications? Where does official and unofficial communication happen? Are communication channels open and democratic or closed and hierarchical? How is knowledge and experience shared? Are rumors/gossip prevalent?
Knowledge flow How do people describe the way knowledge and information is transferred around the organization? How easy is it to find what you need to know, when you need it? How easy is it to find the right person with the right experience?
Communities Are there identifiable ‘communities’ within the organization? Is there a community leader, e.g. problem management community leader? What is the structure and function of these communities?
Networks Are an individual’s networks well developed, on the whole? What kind of information is exchanged by these people?
Working environment Does the working environment create the right conditions for knowledge transfer and integrated working, e.g. close proximity physically and/or electronic tools? How are desks configured?
How are communal areas used?
History How does the organization see its own history? Is it valued and used or quickly forgotten? How does the organization value past experiences, e.g. do people still refer back to their old company after a merger?
Meetings Are meetings seen as productive? How are they managed? Are they effective? Does everyone feel safe to speak? How is opinion or criticism handled? How is output captured or taken forward?
Rewards and motivations How are individuals/teams rewarded or recognized for sharing knowledge/information and experience? What motivates people in the organization? What else might be blocking engagement of an individual/team, e.g. other major change, major incident handling?
Time What are individuals’, teams’ and the organizational attitudes to time, e.g. busy or relaxed; punctual, rigid and unchanging or flexible?