change management
A thorough, repeatable, and organized method for moving individuals, teams, and organizations from their current state to a desired future state to achieve planned business benefits.
Key Points
- Aligns change efforts with strategy and measurable business outcomes.
- Centers on people: stakeholder engagement, clear communication, and leadership sponsorship.
- Follows structured steps: assess readiness and impacts, plan, enable (train/coach), and sustain with reinforcement.
- Iterative and feedback-driven, adapting tactics to increase adoption and value realization.
Example
A company introduces a new DevOps toolchain across agile teams. The project manager runs impact and readiness assessments, maps stakeholders, crafts a communication plan, schedules role-based training and coaching, pilots with one squad, gathers feedback, adjusts materials, and rolls out in waves. Adoption and business benefits are tracked via KPIs such as deployment frequency and lead time, with reinforcement from leaders to sustain the change.
PMP Example Question
During an agile rollout of a new customer support platform, which approach best demonstrates effective change management?
- Update the schedule and proceed; teams will adapt naturally.
- Send a single announcement email and hold one training session.
- Execute a structured, iterative plan covering impact assessment, stakeholder engagement, communications, training/coaching, reinforcement, and benefit tracking.
- Reject the change to avoid scope creep and protect the baseline.
Correct Answer: C — A structured, iterative approach that guides people and the organization to the desired future state
Explanation: Change management is an organized, cyclical method focused on stakeholder adoption and benefits realization; option C reflects these practices, while the other options lack depth and sustained reinforcement.
HKSM