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Change Management Processes
Keith Harrison-Broninski, Role Modellers, UK
INTRODUCTION
Organizations of all types and sizes are investigating the use of techniques
and tools to improve the management of dynamic, complex processes. While
the introduction of tools for Social BPM and Adaptive Case Management has
allowed some progress, there is still an urgent need to support and improve
the management of change itself, which covers a huge range of critical or-
ganizational activity - implementing a Lean or Six Sigma programme, intro-
ducing matrix management practices, adopting cloud technologies, restruc-
turing after a merger or acquisition, and so on.
A mainstream project management approach does not allow the patterns
common to different change processes to be identified and improved, and
neither the workflow-based nor the case-based approach to process defini-
tion is applicable to change management. In the flowchart-centric model of
the workflow-based approach, processes are considered to be a sequence of
steps governed by branch points and conditional loops, in which exceptional
cases are handled by spawning new discussion threads on demand. This
places the human interactions that are critical to change management out-
side of the process itself. In the document- and decision-centric model of the
case-based approach, processes are not structured in advance, but carried
out ad-hoc according to the judgement of the skilled knowledge workers in-
volved, optionally with the aid of business rules to check compliance. This
does not provide enough structure to plan and resource high-level work such
as organizational change, or support work that crosses organizational
boundaries.
This paper explores a third process description approach, Human Interac-
tion Management (HIM), which provides the means to integrate both work-
flow- and case-based approaches into simple, high-level work processes
based on business-oriented principles (effective teams, structured communi-
cation, building knowledge, effective use of time, and dynamic re-planning).
HIM allows non-technical people to create and execute collaborative Plans,
optionally based on standard templates open to continuous improvement.
HIM Plans and sub-Plans flex as necessary while retaining structure, can be
visualized using familiar project management techniques such as GANTT
Charts, and are able to cross organizational boundaries without special con-
figuration.
HIM provides the opportunity to use change management and other high-
level management activities as a means of integrating multiple approaches to
process management into strategy-led operations. Activities in a HIM Plan
that are highly structured or automated can be handled via a workflow-
based sub-process, and Activities in a HIM Plan that are document- or deci-
sion-centric can be handled via a case-based sub-process. Further, HIM en-
ables integration of social technologies into work processes at multiple levels,
since a HIM Plan provides a goal-oriented context for messaging and infor-
mation exchange.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
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CHANGE IS THE NEW NORMAL
Today’s dynamic work environment is causing organizations to reframe the
traditional view of what “normal” is. We are witnessing the effects of globali-
zation, technology advances, complex multinational organizations, more fre-
quent partnering across national borders and company boundaries – just to
mention a few of the enablers and accelerators of change.
No longer will companies have the luxury of expecting day-to-day operations to
fall into a static or predictable pattern that is interrupted only occasionally by
short bursts of change. To prosper, leaders will need to abandon such outdat-
ed notions of change. In reality, the new normal is continuous change – not the
absence of change. [IBM 2008]
IBM Corporation are saying that change has become an operational issue –
not a one-off activity, carried out every now and then in response to events,
but rather a daily activity that must be planned, resourced and managed.
From an organizational perspective, this means that change management is
a capability, which must be continuously improved. However, the best-
known approaches to continuous improvement, Lean Manufacturing and Six
Sigma, known collectively by the Japanese term “kaizen”, cannot be applied
to change management. Lean Manufacturing focuses on the improvement of
efficiency: removing unreasonable work (“muri”), improving flow (“mura”) and
reducing waste (“muda”). Six Sigma focuses on the reduction of defects (or
rather, on reducing the causes of defects), minimizing variation in output by
using statistical techniques in order to achieve financial targets. Neither ef-
ficiency nor defect level are valid measures of success in change manage-
ment, which is about defining goals, both strategic and tactical, and then
aligning and supporting people in sustained movement towards these goals.
In other words, change management requires effective human interaction
across boundaries, both internal boundaries (departments in a company, or
agencies of a government department) and external boundaries (customers,
suppliers and other partners – even, in some cases, competitors). Further,
the nature of change means it is fundamentally about innovation – and a
common innovation is to alter the nature of such boundaries.
BUILDING CHANGE MANAGEMENT CAPABILITY
In order to build change management capability in an organization, it is nec-
essary to identify those aspects of change that are repeatable. In other
words, it is necessary to describe change from a process perspective, rather
than, for example, using mainstream project management techniques. The
processes of change must be described not only so as to allow for flexible
crossing of boundaries and for innovation, as described above, but also so as
to obtain understanding and agreement from all stakeholders, many of
whom will not have a technical background or be supportive of a technically-
oriented approach to process description.
In modern business practice, there are 3 dominant paradigms for the de-
scription of processes:
1. Business Process Management (BPM) [Fingar 2002]
2. Adaptive Case Management (ACM) [Swenson 2010]
3. Human Interaction Management (HIM) [Harrison-Broninski 2005]
Each of these paradigms is considered below in relation to description of
change management processes.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
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BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT
"[BPM] Processes are described as the predefined sequences of activities with
decisions (gateways) to direct the sequence along alternative paths or for itera-
tions. These models are effective for well-defined, repeatable processes."
[OMG 2009]
BPM is aimed at the automation of routine work. Typical BPM use cases in-
clude:
Manufacturing
Order fulfilment
Logistics
Finance
Human Resources
BPM is a systems-led approach to process description that aims to automate
work as far as possible, and treats collaboration as an exception. BPM nota-
tions typically allow definition of one-way messages with a single recipient,
rather than persistent communication channels involving multiple people. A
recent development is “Social BPM", in which tools use email, instant mes-
saging or some other communication technique to resolve an issue or excep-
tional case by breaking out of the process itself to introduce a complemen-
tary discussion thread. However, human interactions in Social BPM are ex-
ternal to, rather than central to, the main flow of activity and hence are not
open to process improvement.
One feature of BPM that appears to be relevant to change management is
support for “Public” and “Private” processes to deal with cross-boundary col-
laboration. Public processes describe the conversations between organiza-
tions in terms of messages passed, and Private processes describe the work
internal to each organization that creates and consumes the messages (and
ultimately delivers value). However, this approach has 3 major weaknesses
with respect to change management and other high-level management pro-
cesses.
First, it is necessary to decide at the start where the boundaries between
Public and Private are to be placed. This means that work cannot be divided
among organizations flexibly over time, but must be allocated once and for
all at the start, and thereafter remain behind closed walls.
Second, the essence of the approach is to hide rather than to share – to
maintain an atmosphere of defensive privacy rather than to open the kimono
and expose the details of business operations to partners. It is becoming
widely recognized that open-ness is a key factor in business success. Not
only is demand pull more efficient than supply push (as Lean practitioners
have known for decades) but, more generally, open-ness makes for better,
closer business relationships as business practices evolve.
Third, the mutual inter-dependence of Public and Private Processes makes
the structure as a whole fragile, with poor tolerance for change. An internal
change to a Private process may invalidate related Public Processes, and
vice-versa, without there being any obvious way of detecting the problem. In
general, having two separate types of process, only some of which are
shared, makes it harder to create dynamic, responsive partnerships that flex
with business circumstances.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
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Public and Private processes are valuable if the business processes with
which you are concerned are highly automated and repetitive, but unsuita-
ble if you need to manage cross-boundary processes that are dynamic and
collaborative, such as those of change management.
ADAPTIVE CASE MANAGEMENT
"The emphasis of a case management process is on maintenance of records
and support for human decision-making and activities” [OMG 2009]
ACM allows people to assemble a case file ad-hoc, restricted by business
rules that ensure compliance. Typical ACM use cases include:
Licensing
Insurance application and claim processing
Medical diagnosis
Mortgage processing
Customer problem resolution
Invoice discrepancy handling
Equipment maintenance
ACM is a point solution for knowledge work, in which skilled people solve
problems by creating documents and data in the repository of a single organ-
ization, with compliance enforced via business rules defined for that organi-
zation. ACM does not provide the structure necessary to plan and resource
high-level work such as organizational change, or support work that crosses
organizational boundaries. ACM cases are assembled ad-hoc during execu-
tion, and have a centralized structure that is antithetical to cross-boundary
collaboration.
HUMAN INTERACTION MANAGEMENT
HIM allows non-technical people to create and execute collaborative Plans for
the achievement of individual and shared goals, optionally based on stand-
ard templates open to continuous improvement. HIM Plans and sub-Plans
flex as necessary while retaining structure, can be visualized using familiar
project management techniques such as GANTT Charts, and are able to
cross organizational boundaries without special configuration. [Harrison-
Broninski 2005]
HIM allows people from multiple organizations to play Roles to provide Deliv-
erables in different Stages of a Plan, communicating purposefully and re-
planning on the fly as the work progresses. Typical HIM use cases include:
Research & Development
Marketing
Complex sales
Project management
Merger & Acquisition
Organizational change
HIM is a simple, non-technical way to structure complex work that involves
innovation and crosses boundaries. Business people create and improve
HIM Plan templates to provide helpful, scalable, flexible and repeatable
structure for their own working activities.
Critically for high-level work such as change management, HIM is not based
on a command-and-control approach in which a single organization main-
tains a task sequence or repository. Rather, HIM is based on five principles:
CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
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1. Effective team building
2. Structured communication
3. Knowledge creation
4. Empowered time management
5. Collaborative, real-time planning
HELPFUL, SCALABLE, FLEXIBLE AND REPEATABLE STRUCTURE
To implement the principles of HIM, Plans are structured as follows:
• A Plan has an overall Goal and multiple (possibly concurrent) Stages
with separate sub-Goals.
• In each Stage, people play Roles with separate responsibilities, result-
ing in the provision of Deliverables.
• Plan members negotiate via Stage-specific communication channels
to progress and evolve the Plan during usage.
• A Deliverable may be produced via sub-Plans and used as an Input
by other Roles.
• A Plan is made either ad-hoc or from a template. Any Plan can be
turned into a template for future Plans, thus enabling re-use and improve-
ment of collaborative work.
• Enterprise resources are included in a Plan by defining a Task that
invokes a Web service, URL, workflow or case. Communication thereafter
can be bi-directional.
• The Plan owner manages the work in a Plan, adjusting use of Deliv-
erables and approving Stage/Deliverable statuses as necessary.
Business people readily take to this approach and see its advantages. For
example, deployment of a Human Interaction Management System (HIMS –
the process server for HIM Plans) during 2010 by the world’s third largest
employer, the UK National Health Service, “enabled non-technical business
users to transform processes previously modelled as complex, static
flowcharts into simple, dynamic Plans.” [HumanEdj 2010]
CROSS-BOUNDARY COLLABORATION
As well as providing support for high-level innovation activities, HIM also
supports work by people from multiple organizations. A network of HIM
Plans may cross any organizational boundaries without special configura-
tion.
From a management point of view, the basic information boundaries in a
Plan are Stages. All (and only) participants in a particular Stage may see
data, documents and messages for that Stage, irrespective of the organiza-
tions for which they work. You see what you need to see in order to fulfill
your responsibilities, no more and no less. Hence it is possible to design
processes and sub-processes without needing to decide which organization
will perform each part of the work. The work can be allocated flexibly during
execution without need to adjust the process or to worry about data protec-
tion issues.
From a technology point of view, HIM mandates that each participant in a
Plan has their own copy of the Plan, containing the details that they need
(and are permitted) to access. Hence the function of a HIMS is entirely dif-
ferent from that of a BPM or ACM System. Rather than maintaining the
CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
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state of a process, and moving it on automatically when appropriate, a HIMS
acts to synchronize the copies of a Plan held by each participant. This
means that each person in a Plan can use a different HIMS, hosted by their
own organization – just as each person in an email conversation can use a
different email server.
A HIM Plan is not a “process instance” or “case file”, hosted and controlled
by a single organization. Rather, a HIM Plan is a means of making collabo-
rative activity visible and synchronizing the work carried out. Each person
in a HIM Plan has their own copy, which they access via their own HIMS.
They can even take part in the Plan via regular email. Just like email, their
copy of the Plan is automatically synchronized with the copies held by their
colleagues. The information they have access to, and that they share with
others, depends on the Stages in which they participate.
It is also possible to share the existence of documents or data without shar-
ing the details. A HIM Plan user can create, view, maintain and delete in-
formation not only internal to the Plan or in their own HIMS database, but in
any repository, access to which may or may not be available to other par tici-
pants.
In fact, a HIMS is a Multi-Agent System designed around human interaction,
in which Plans are synchronized between different HIMS instances using a
standard Agent Control Language. It is possible to configure HIMS Plans to
include automated activities and even entirely automated Roles. However, a
user is quite unaware of this, since their HIMS updates their Plans constant-
ly and automatically in the background.
HIM GIVES STRUCTURE TO CHANGE
The structure of high-level collaborative work such as change management
evolves through negotiation between its participants. HIM supports this by
allowing the Stages, Roles, Deliverables and Activities in a Plan to be refined
and extended during execution. Sub-Plans can also be added and removed
as required.
Further, a Plan can be re-used as a template, providing a foundation for con-
tinuous improvement. However, this begs the question of how to improve a
HIM Plan. What are the criteria for successful human interactions? In par-
ticular, what are the criteria for successful change management?
CHANGE AIMS
To support the definition of effective Plans, a simple, universal business
change methodology is associated with HIM. This is known as Goal-Oriented
Organization Design (GOOD).
GOOD is based on the premise that there are four generic “Change Aims”
that apply to any kind of organization and any kind of change:
1. Ensure that work meets stakeholder needs
2. Deliver results into a business-as-usual environment
3. Maximize benefits from outcomes
4. Minimize costs associated with delivery
These Change Aims give rise to 3 Stages (Design, Delivery and Optimization)
in which a set of related Roles at Strategic and Executive level collaborate to
produce a Process Architecture, associated Business Motivation Model, and
CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
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derived Benefits Profiles, and then engage with stakeholders to deliver an on-
going programme of effective, continuous business change.
STAGES OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT
The Stages of GOOD and the associated Roles are listed below, and their re-
lationship to one another indicated in Figure 1. The deliverables from each
Stage are discussed in following sections.
1. Design
Scope Definition
Strategic Stakeholder Management
Benefits Definition
2. Delivery
Requirements Management
Executive Stakeholder Management
Operational Transition
Risk Management
3. Optimization
Marketing & Communications
Benefits Realization
CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
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Figure 1: GOOD Stages and Roles
GOOD STRATEGIC CONTROL
There are three main deliverables from the first Stage of GOOD:
The Scope Definition Role is responsible for delivering a Process Ar-
chitecture. This is a diagram identifying the “Essential Business
Entities” of an organization and the corresponding “Units of Work”.
Originating in the RIVA methodology [Ould 2005], a Process Architec-
ture describes the complete domain of an organization’s activities.
The Strategic Stakeholder Management Role is responsible for deliv-
ering a Business Motivation Model (BMM). This identifies the
“Ends” an organization wishes to achieve, the “Means” by which they
CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
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intend to do so, the “Influencers” of these Ends and Means, and the
“Assessments” made by the Influencers. BMM is an OMG standard
[OMG 2010]. In GOOD, a Process Architecture is used as the basis
for creating a BMM.
The Benefits Definition Role is responsible for delivering Benefits
Profiles for a planned set of changes. These measure and optimize
business value from the proposed activities in order to support the
achievement of successful outcomes. Benefits Profiles are used wide-
ly in UK government [OGC 2005]. In GOOD, a BMM is used as the
basis for defining Benefits Profiles.
GOOD EXECUTIVE CONTROL
There are a large number of deliverables from the second and third Stages of
GOOD, which are typically customized for each organization implementing
the methodology depending on their concerns. A typical set of concerns is
outlined below for each Executive Control Stage.
Typical GOOD Design Stage Concerns by Role
Requirements Management
o Sources
Government
Industry
Customers
Suppliers
Partners
Internal
o Business Model
Domain Model
Systems
Statuses
Process Architecture
Lifecycles
o Review
o Retention
o Ownership
o Sharing
o Consistency
o Migration
Cleansing
o Deletion
Organizational Structure
Security Model
Actor Catalogue
Business Use Cases
Process Diagrams
Issue Log
Executive Stakeholder Management
o End-user Identification
o Relationship building
Knowledge transfer
In
Out
CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
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Interaction management
Internal
Between stakeholders
o Management needs
Resources
Information
Operational Transition
o Infrastructure
Business process design
Information domain
Roles and responsibilities
User characteristics
Interaction channels
Activities and Tasks
Business rules
Systems
Internal
Interfaces
Data migration
o Cleansing
Communications
E-mail
Web
Telephony
Fax
Other? (snail mail, etc)
Real estate
o Implementation
Management structure
Business process execution
People
Resourcing
Training
Performance
Internal
External
Risk Management
o Dependencies
Deliverables
Timescales
Resources
o Compliance
o Perception
Benefits
Operational Staff
Typical GOOD Optimization Stage Concerns by Role
Marketing and Communications
o Context analysis
Government
Industry
CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
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Customers
Suppliers
Partners
Internal
o Promotional plan
Vision
Goals
Objectives
Mission
Strategy
Policy
o Coordinated communications
Implementation
On-going evaluation
Benefits Realization
o Benefits To Operations Mapping
o Stakeholder Benefits Assessment Plans
Measurement techniques
Tracking and reporting processes
System impacts
o Promised Outcome Monitoring
Review points
Audit
o Cross-cutting Issues
o Effort Prioritisation Support
o Business Case
Benefit profiles
Including dis-benefits
Assumptions
Full discussion of the above concerns is beyond the scope of this paper.
INTEGRATING GOOD WITH OPERATIONS
Change management processes must be integrated with the underpinning
operational activities in order to streamline their execution, monitoring and
support by managers. Typically this means integrating HIM Plans with BPM
workflows, with ACM cases, and with other enterprise resources such as En-
terprise Content Management (ECM) systems and social technologies.
HIM Plans interoperate and integrate with other standard forms of process
technology. A HIM Plan can initiate, and be initiated by, a workflow process
and communicate bi-directionally thereafter. Similarly, a HIM Plan can ini-
tiate a case and utilize its information artefacts. HIM Plans may create,
view, maintain and delete documents in ECM systems. A HIMS provides
goal-oriented instant messaging and data/document exchange, and can in-
tegrate with other social technologies.
In many ways a HIMS is the natural top layer of an enterprise process stack,
and point of integration with the organization's intranet. HIM Plans are
based on a common sense, non-technical approach (Stages, Roles and Deliv-
erables) that is easy to understand, and a HIMS provides familiar views of
current and planned activity such as GANTT Charts and resource alloca-
tions.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
12
CONCLUSIONS
HIM provides a simple and effective way of designing collaborative work pro-
cesses to which business people immediately relate, and of which they natu-
rally feel in control. HIM Plans are particularly supportive of high-level work
such as change management since not only do they flex to support innova-
tion while retaining helpful structure but also cross organizational bounda-
ries without special configuration.
HIMS Plans are based on creation and sharing of knowledge in a structured
way. Business people find the structure they provide - Roles in different
Stages providing Deliverables - more intuitive than working according to a
flowchart, and more supportive of high-level work than construction of a
case file.
Information boundaries within a network of HIM Plans are separate from or-
ganizational boundaries, making a network of Plans fully adaptive to work
that spans multiple departments, agencies and organizations. Participants
in a particular Plan may use separate process servers, just as participants in
an email conversation may use separate email servers. People in a Plan re-
tain ownership of their own data and can choose how and when to share it.
Email became the dominant technology for business collaboration not only
because it is flexible, but because participants share the same tools yet can
use their own servers. You can send an email to someone without connect-
ing to their email server directly, or even needing to know what server they
use. As organizations seek to replace email with a process-oriented ap-
proach to collaboration, it is necessary both to establish the right balance
between flexibility and structure, and to retain the key advantage of email –
its decentralized nature.
HIM is uniquely suited to a business landscape in which connect-and-
collaborate is taking over from command-and-control as the basis for com-
petitive advantage. HIM Plans provide the basis for continuous improvement
of critical organizational activities such as change management, and inte-
grate naturally with other process management techniques such as workflow
and Case Management to support organizations that aim to become fully
process-oriented from top to bottom.
REFERENCES
(Fingar 2002) Howard Smith and Peter Fingar. Business Process Manage-
ment: The Third Wave. Meghan-Kiffer Press, 2002.
(Harrison-Broninski 2005) Keith Harrison-Broninski. Human Interactions:
How people really work and how they can be helped to work better. Me-
ghan-Kiffer Press, 2005.
(HumanEdj 2010) http://rolemodellers.com/humanedj.html.
(IBM 2008) IBM Corporation. Making Change Work. IBM Global Business
Services, 2008.
(OGC 2005) Office of Government Commerce (www.ogc.gov.uk). Managing
Benefits: An Overview. Andy Honeywood, 2005.
(OMG 2009) Object Management Group. Case Management Process Modeling
(CMPM) Request For Proposal. OMG Document: Bmi/2009-09-23.
(OMG 2010) Object Management Group. Business Motivation Model Version
1.1. OMG Document: formal/2010-05-01.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
13
(Ould 2005) Martyn Ould. Business Process Management: A rigorous ap-
proach. Meghan-Kiffer Press, 2005.
(Swenson 2010) Keith D. Swenson. Mastering The Unpredictable: How Adap-
tive Case Management Will Revolutionize The Way that Knowledge Workers
Get Things Done. Meghan-Kiffer Press, 2010.
EXAMPLE OF INDEX
Adaptive Case Management, 1, 2
Agent Control Language, 6
automation of routine work, 3
Business Process Management, 2
Change Aims, 6
change management, 1, 2
change management capability, 2
cloud, 1
collaborative Plans, 4
Collaborative, real-time planning,
5
Deliverables, 4
Effective team building, 5
Email, 12
Empowered time management, 5
GANTT Charts, 1, 4
Goal-Oriented Organization
Design, 6
GOOD, 6
HIM, 1
HIM principles, 4
human interaction, 2
Human Interaction Management,
1, 2
Human Interaction Management
System, 5
innovation, 2
kaizen, 2
Knowledge creation, 5
Lean, 1
Lean Manufacturing, 2
matrix management, 1
muda, 2
Multi-Agent System, 6
mura, 2
muri, 2
organizational boundaries, 4, 5
Plan, 4
project management, 1, 2
Public and Private processes, 3
Roles, 4
Six Sigma, 1, 2
Social BPM, 1, 3
social technologies, 1
Stages, 4
Structured communication, 5
Typical ACM use cases, 4
Typical BPM use cases, 3
Typical HIM use cases, 4