Change Impact Assessment

About the Change Impact Assessment

Whether the change is planned, structured and clear or takes place organically over time, many factors will impact the success of the Change Initiative.  The Change Impact Assessment is a process to analyse the impact of a proposed change initiative on the organisation.  This assessment focuses on the effect at all levels of the organisational, structure, and culture, from stakeholders and customers, enabling you to identify issues before they arise so that plans can be put in place to mitigate their impact.   Questions the Change Impact Statement will help;

• Are groups or individuals subject to gradual or constant impact?
• Does it come in waves?  If so, how frequent are the waves?

A Change Impact Assessment is typically completed during the initialisation phase to identify the effect on processes, people and technology.

Why you need to complete a Change Impact Statement

A Change Impact Assessment is a critical component for increasing the success of an organisational change, and it serves as a foundation for many other parts of the Change Management Process.  Understanding the impact of a Change Initiative is significant for implementation planning.  Knowing how departments, functions, workgroups, and specific jobs are impacted, you can identify the potential effect on ongoing business operations.

Adopting change can be difficult for any company, as it means every level of management and staff needs to step outside the confines of the business and look into the future.   The assessment helps prepare for adoption, considering how the change is expected to impact the company across its various departments.  It examines high-level impacts on the organisational structure and culture and the knowledge requirements for the company to adopt the new change, which identifies affected processes.  

Prerequisites

You will need a Change Team ready to help complete the Change Impact Assessment, plus key early adopter stakeholders. The high-level scope of change, objectives and benefits should have been defined. Workshops need to be organised to brainstorm the impacts, which require a forward-looking approach to help capture the future effects which will take place. A Blast Radius and/or Force Field Analysis may have been completed before or as part of the assessment workshop.

Steps To Complete A Change Impact Statement 

1. Ensure the change team and key stakeholders are briefed and ready with full access to all the relevant information.
2. Ensure the proposed change is clearly defined, what the change is designed to address, and the benefits and outcomes.
3. The sponsor describes the Change Initiative to the team describing the new stories and the future.
4. Brainstorm the key differences between the current and new stories when the Proposed Change is complete.  It is essential to get input from all the personas in the workshop.
5. Focus on the possible effects of the key differences.
6. Identify who and what might be affected.
7. Consider the impact on different departments, processes, customers, stakeholders and others.
8. Discuss other options to achieve the desired outcomes
9. Complete a Blast Radius and/or Force Field Analysis if they haven't completed
10. Prioritise the possible positive and negative effects based on the impact size and the decision's consequences.
11. Document the results, including the consequences, and identify the actions required to mitigate the consequences.
12. Identify the people's impact and whether the change will be supported or resisted.

Next steps

• Decide to proceed based on the documented effects of opportunity vs. consequences and the cost to manage the consequences Vs. the cost of doing nothing.
• Transfer the documented results to the Change Implementation Plan.
• Add the risks and mitigations to the risk and issues log.