How to Use a RAID Log for People Risk, Not Just Delivery Risk
Open almost any programme RAID log and the risks are recognisable: integration complexity, supplier dependency, environment availability, data migration volume, budget contingency. Somewhere near the bottom, in amber, one line reads “User adoption risk — Medium — Owner: Change Manager — Mitigation: comms and training plan in place”. It has said that for eleven months. […]
Your First 30 Days as a Change Lead on a Troubled Programme
You have inherited a programme that everyone describes as challenging. The status is amber and has been for four months, two workstream leads have left, and the go-live date has not moved. The instinct is to rebuild the plan. Resist it for a month. A plan built on the same wrong assumptions will be a […]
Benefit Ownership: Why Benefits Die When the Programme Does
The business case listed fourteen benefits. At closure, the programme reported that the capability enabling all fourteen had been delivered, which was true. Two years later nobody can say whether any of them arrived. Not because the answer is bad, but because no one was accountable for finding out, and there was never a baseline […]
From Project to BAU: Who Owns the Process After the Programme Closes
The closure report is signed. The programme team is redeployed, the steering committee is stood down, and the system is described as being in business as usual. Nobody has said who now owns the process. Eighteen months later, when someone asks why the credit check step was configured to run before rather than after approval, […]
Multi-Country Rollouts: Where Global Change Plans Break Locally
The template is 95 per cent standard. That was the design principle, it was agreed at board level, and it is the reason the business case works. Four countries then take roughly twice as long as planned, and in the post-implementation review they are described as having been resistant to standardisation. In three of the […]
Works Councils and Change Programmes: Consultation Without Delay
The German go-live slipped by four months. Not for a technical reason — the build was finished — but because the works agreement covering the new system had not been concluded, and without it the system could not be switched on. The programme plan had a line for it. It said “works council briefing”, it […]
What Change Management Actually Costs on an ERP Programme
“What percentage of the programme budget should change management be?” It is the question every sponsor asks, and the honest answer is that the percentage heuristics in circulation are not evidence. Figures between 5 and 15 per cent get quoted freely, almost always without a traceable source, usually by organisations selling the service. A number […]
How to Build the Business Case for a Change Management Budget
The programme budget is £14 million. The change management line is £180,000, and in month three it is cut to £110,000 because the integration workstream needs more testing capacity. The cut is not unreasonable from where the decision was made. Testing capacity has a defined output and a visible consequence if it is missing. The […]
What to Do When Your Sponsor Is Absent
Your sponsor has missed the last three steering committees. Decisions are being deferred, two functions are in an unresolved argument, and requests for people are met with sympathy and no movement. Most advice on this subject is written for the sponsor. This is written for the person who has to deliver anyway. Diagnose before you […]
Active Sponsorship: What Sponsors Must Do, Not Just Say
The sponsor has done everything asked of them. They opened the kick-off, recorded a video, mentioned the programme in the quarterly town hall, and attend the steering committee most months. The programme still cannot get two people released from operations, two functions have been disagreeing about master data ownership since May, and nobody believes the […]