The agile way of implementing changes has been popular for quite a number of years among a range of companies, from small startups through to large corporations. Most agile methodologies do not address the role of change management explicitly as a function. However, at the same time, most project practitioners agree that managing change is a critical skillset. In fact, surveys conducted by the Project Management Institute consistently found that change management is rated as one of the top skills for a project manager.

To find out more about agile methodology and embedding change management within it, please read our Ultimate Guide to Agile for Change Managers.

In this article, we will focus on a range of toolkits that support agile to help change managers implement change. Gone at the days when the change manager needs to work on large presentations and slides detailing every aspect of the plan. It was not uncommon to see more than 100 slides for a change plan. In the agile world, documentation is important but more important is the conversation and working with stakeholders.

Toolkit 1: Change Canvas

The change canvas or ‘change-on-a-page’ is a summary of the change plan. It follows a similar simple and summarised format as a Lean Canvas. The change canvas may be used to socialise what the change is about and the approach in implementing the change with a range of stakeholders.

Previous versions of the change canvas are often designed with more of a project plan slant. In the current version, we focus on a core set of questions that the change practitioner needs to answer in creating a change plan. To download the canvas click here.

Toolkit 2: Change experiment card

A core part of agile is about experimenting and iterating through a series of changes, versus planning one change. The idea is that each small change is an experiment with a hypothesis that can be tested and proven to be true or false using data. When the overall change becomes a series of smaller changes, each change iterates on the previous change. The overall risk of failure is reduced and each change is one step closer toward the ultimate successful end state.

Applying this concept in change management – The change experiment card is a template to help you design, plan and test your change experiment. To download the template please click here.

Change experiments can range from:

• Project message positioning to stakeholders
• Learning design effectiveness
• Effectiveness of a communications channel in engaging with stakeholders
• Change readiness tactic
• Effectiveness of the change vision artefact

Toolkit 3: Behaviour over time graph

Plotting expected or actual stakeholder behaviour over time is an effective way to anticipate or track how they are experiencing change. It can provide significant insight on whether additional change interventions are required to shift the stakeholder towards the change process effectively, if there are any obstacles being faced or if the time taken along the change journey is the speed as anticipated.

Here is an example of a behaviour over time graph.

Toolkit 4: Connected circles analysis

The connected circles analysis chart can be used to understand the influencing powers of various stakeholders within the project. Agile projects are very much dependent on effective stakeholder engagement and collaboration. A range of stakeholders are thrown together within the same project from the beginning and there is a high expectation of successful collaboration and teamwork across the board. This analysis helps you to visualise the power dynamism and influence mechanisms amongst different stakeholders.

With the insight gained from this, the change manager can better focus on how to resolve any relationship issues, risks, and leverage the network to achieve better relationship and outcomes within the group.

Toolkit 5: Causal loop diagram

Systems thinking is critical in agile projects. Systems thinking means that you’re able to see the various components and how these components affect each other within the overall environment, or system. This contrasts with a linear view of A causing B or vice versa.

The causal loop diagram helps to flesh out and analysis key factors in the overall system and what causal relationship there are between different factors.

The below example shows employee sentiments toward a system change. This is a very simplified version of what happens since in real scenarios there could be various factors that are reinforcing each other, leading to lots of arrows pointing at different directions. At a more sophisticated level, you may assign points in terms of the strength of the causal relationship. At a basic level even plotting the causal relationship between a few key factors may generate key insight into the ‘why’ of the dynamics of a situation.

For those who work in organisations that are undergoing a significant number of agile changes, there needs to be a way to capture and visualise these changes so that the data can aid decision making for stakeholders. Using data visualisation, stakeholders can gain a better grasp of the various changes across the organisation and be able to understand key capacity challenges, crunch periods, the velocity of changes across time, and pinpoint particular parts of the organisation that may need extra support.

The following are key steps in which an organisation can leverage tools such as The Change Compass to derive one view of change and to better plan the implementation of changes. With embedded operational routines that regularly focus on change data in conjunction with other business and project data, the business is able to build its change capability through constant reviews, valuable stakeholder discussions, iterations on change tactics and adjusting plans to get ready for change.

To download this diagram click here.