An important component in creating and sustaining new systems and processes is change management. Freezing change is an important of the change management process. Freezing change allows systems and process to be adopted as part of normal practice, it provides time for the users to accept and manage the change and enables the systems to be reviewed and evaluated before more changes are implemented.
What is the purpose of a change management plan?
A change management plan helps manage the change process, and ensures control in budget, schedule, scope, communication, and resources. The change management plan will minimise the impact a change can have on the business, employees, customers, and other important stakeholders
There will be times throughout the year when it’s in the best interest of your business to invoke a change freeze, i.e. a period when changes are minimised, ideally ceased, to protect business operations. This might relate to busy/critical business periods, times such as seasonal holidays when fewer IT staff will be at work, times when major infrastructure changes are already planned, or similar.
Types of change
Developmental change
Developmental changes are those changes related to the improvement of business processes.
- Updating payroll structures
- Automating Leave processes
Developmental change may be your first step to making further changes to your business that will help you meet the demands of your market. Managing these small steps well demonstrates to your team that you are taking a sensible, measured approach to change.
When making developmental changes, it’s important for you to:
- explain to staff your rationale for the changes
- skill your staff to use new processes and technology
- show your staff your commitment to minimising the impacts of change on your business.
Transitional change
Transitional changes are those you make to replace existing processes with new processes. Transitional change is more challenging to implement and can increase staff discomfort.
Examples of transitional change include:
- creating new products or services
- reporting
- implementing new technology
- new devices for staff
The ‘transitional’ phase of dismantling old systems and processes and implementing new ones can be unsettling for staff.
When making transitional changes, you need to:
- clearly communicate the impacts and benefits you foresee resulting from the changes
- reinforce to staff that there is support and training
- capture the views and contributions of your staff in making your changes
- regularly update your staff on the steps you are taking to support them through the change and train them in new systems
- communicate the reason for the change and the benefits of the changes.
Timing of changes and change freeze
Term time means systems in progress, reporting, marking and teaching, so in general these aren’t great times to be making changes to production systems/services. Thus, by invoking a change freeze, and restricting change, it increases stability by lowering the risk profile.
Outside of term time, there’s still of course a need to understand when IT support teams will struggle to deal with the potential support impact of a high volume of changes.
Document Your Change Freeze Period
Once you know your change-freeze dates, and have agreed them with key business stakeholders, document the dates and times so that you can let people know when it’s happening.
When drafting your change-freeze communications, make them easy to read and understand. If you have a standard IT template for awareness communications, then use it so that it has the same look and feel as all the usual important IT updates.
Finally, when documenting your change-freeze timings don’t forget to call out the date range, if the dates are inclusive, and any time zone differences.
Communicate
Once the change-freeze dates have been agreed, documented, and checked (and ideally sanity checked again). it’s time to communicate it out.
Something as important as an impending change freeze shouldn’t be a one-time thing. So, make sure that you get the message out effectively by using multiple channels and messages. The change freeze will help to establish process and practice and provide some stability to staff who may be overwhelmed with the changes that are taking place in the school – both technology and system related.