Change Management

[AreaCode707]

I tell my stakeholders WAY in advance that change management will make or break their projects, we work on communication and training heavily throughout, but there is always ALWAYS that person...

Today it took the shape of someone who, having NEVER logged into the new tool, calls and leaves me a voicemail saying that, "I know it's not your fault but it if it would just be faster for me to do this from scratch then it defeats the purpose and wastes my time."

WTFBBQWATERMELONNINJAKICK

You've never even logged IN, how can you know if it is faster to do it from scratch? Oh, and the problem we're trying to solve really isn't your convenience and speed, it's immediate access for YOUR customers, and the fact that you promptly lose everything you work on so we're going to make sure it's stored, accessible, reportable and sends notifications on important dates. I'm sure your VP would LOVE to know that the million dollars and two years we spent on this aren't worth you logging in and following instructions because "it's a waste of your time."

I hate users sometimes, I really do.

 

[Orsorum]

Awww, *hugs*.

 

[Nik]

That sucks, AC707. Can you call this guy and leave that exact message on his voicemail? Is there any way you can perverbially kick him in the balls and put him in his place in such a way that the only response you get is "okay" and compliance?

Or does your job require you to resort to politics?

 

[Barfo]

You can always count on dumb people to be dumb.

 

[Pepsei]

we have change management here too. thank god for surrogates who can do approvals... if all else fail, there's emergency change approvals, but i have to sit on the phone for 20 minutes or so....

 

[dougp]

Don't get me started on CM - I've been chairing our CAB meetings and also setup the workflow in our CM application, and it's amazing how much people can't grasp the concept of planning ahead. I love it when our development team has had existing core changes for 3-4 months, yet springs it on our Operations group 3 days before it needs to be implemented.

 

[Blieb]

Well, what are you going to document as the lesson learned here?

 

[Zenmervolt]

Could be worse. You could be scheduled for an October go-live, have absolutely no coherent business requirements, have no permission or authority to push for those business requirements, have no permission or authority to requires that the requirements be actually measurable ("the system has to be fast", "well, what's 'fast'?", "fast", "like, 2 seconds or 10 seconds?", "fast", *head explodes*), and have no authority to comment on what the scope should be.

Oh yeah, and in the meeting today, one of the people from the client has committed to getting a vital specification for how the document creation program will function... by the end of October. (Note the go-live target in the above paragraph.)

ZV <-- Mildly stressed.

 

[vi edit]

No advice...but I can absolutely sympathize with my fellow ATOT'ers who also are denizens of the hell that is change control.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: Blieb
Well, what are you going to document as the lesson learned here?

That's easy. If you kill all your users, life is much easier. For thoroughness, however, I recommend just killing the business partners too. They're the ones whose specs cause things to tank.

ZV

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: Nik
That sucks, AC707. Can you call this guy and leave that exact message on his voicemail? Is there any way you can perverbially kick him in the balls and put him in his place in such a way that the only response you get is "okay" and compliance?

Or does your job require you to resort to politics?

Politics, unfortunately.

 

[BTA]

Sigh. I hate change management.

 

[ivan2]

what changed?

 

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: BTA
Sigh. I hate change management.

Probably because you're not the one responsible when things go horribly wrong as you hear the sound of vast sums of money being flushed away.

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: ivan2
what changed?

I was actually talking about change management from the perspective of getting my users comfortable with change (new system) and adoption, not really the idea of change orders and a change management process.

Though I feel the pain from other people there! Having a system without change management, or users that complain about going through formal change management channels is a PITA.