Change Management: A Toolkit
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Design the Change Programme → Assess the
capacity of the organisation to handle more change
Design the
Change Programme
Principle: Design the change programme to maximise the chance of
success
Assess the capacity of the organisation to handle more
change: Cases
In their Report ‘Delivering successful IT-enabled business
change’ the NAO identified nine key questions for departments
embarking on such change. The first of these is:
“Is the board able to make informed judgements
about the department’s capacity to manage change? Our case studies
highlight the importance to organisations in managing their
portfolio of programmes and projects of establishing a clear
overview of the range of business change activities planned or
underway at any one time and assessing their capacity to handle
the change.”
In their Report ‘Modern Policy-Making: Ensuring
Policies Deliver Value for Money’ the NAO recommended that:
“Departments should address the suitability of
their policy making systems and... should be rigorous and systematic in determining and
analysing the key factors and barriers at the outset of policies,
such as the behaviour of implementers or the client group, which
may have an impact on the likely success or failure of a policy.
Departments should build into policy design:
...
- Assessments of the capability of those responsible for
implementing policies, so that departments can gain assurance
that implementers have the capacity - in terms of capital, human resources and technical
infrastructure, such as information technology systems or
logistics - to deliver what is required in the timescale
planned, and can cope with variations in workload, for instance,
if policies involve services led by demand from client groups.”
In their Report ‘Increased resources to improve public services -
a progress report on departments' preparations’ the NAO concluded on
project and programme management capacity:
“Many of the planned improvements in public
services depend on the successful implementation of new IT
projects and the construction and refurbishment of schools,
hospitals, and transport systems. Departments across government
currently have underway collectively over 100 critical IT projects
with a combined value of some £10 billion… The success of this
investment, so that it is delivered on time and to cost and
quality requirements, depends on departments having well developed
project management skills.”
In their Report ‘PPP in practice: National Savings
and Investments' deal with Siemens Business Services, four years
on’ the NAO identified that:
“SBS underestimated the challenge of
transforming NS&I's old business and found existing processes were
complex and difficult to change. It encountered a number of
problems when it began to transfer NS&I products from legacy
systems to Thaler, and as it took a long time to find solutions,
weaknesses in the migration process continued.”
In their Report ‘Delivery Chain Analysis for Bus Services in
England’ the NAO identified that:
“The Department first drew up a detailed delivery
plan in early 2003 for the 2002 PSA target and has since revised
and refined it. In preparing its plan, the Department did not draw
up delivery chain maps or review whether the existing delivery
chains were fit for purpose. In his July 2004 Review of Public
Sector Efficiency, Sir Peter Gershon pointed to the usefulness of
delivery chain maps, in helping departments understand the
complexity of public sector policy, funding and regulation.”
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