How to Create an Evergreen Change Management Playbook for Government Teams
One of the most challenging parts of implementing new technology is communicating the change to the people who use it.
Nova Scotia’s Department of Cyber Security & Digital Solutions (CSDS) wanted to find a way to successfully roll out enhancements to a core system used by many government departments while also establishing change management best practices for future projects.
Here’s how Code for Canada helped them do it.
The Challenge
CSDS’ Emerging Platforms team needed to design and execute a change management plan to roll out enhancements to the core system.
The plan needed to be easy to use for CSDS staff and meet the needs of government employees navigating the changes to the core system.
Our Approach
The Code for Canada team interviewed a broad range of stakeholders to understand the project's concerns, risks and challenges.
They led “alignment sessions” with different teams to understand their perspective and create a shared understanding of the work ahead.
They then led a “scenario planning session” where they asked stakeholders to think of “worst-case scenarios” during the change rollout and brainstorm mitigation strategies for each.
From there, they created the final change management playbook.
The Outcome
The playbook included:
- A timeline of enhancements to the system that outlined the principles, objectives and expected outcomes of the entire change process
- A communication strategy for letting users know about the enhancements, including a library of communication templates and instructions on how to use them
- Risk mitigation strategies to ensure any issues blocking the change adoption could be resolved quickly
CSDS now has a one-to-shop for everything they need to communicate with users as they upgrade the system, embedded into their Sharepoint and OneDrive for easy access.
Best of all, they now have a universal change management playbook that can be used as a guide for future projects.
