Simple guide to managing change in agile environments

6 min readNov 4, 2021

‘We don’t seem to be able to implement anything that sticks. People just keep falling back to doing things their own way and it seems impossible to bring new or consistent processes throughout the company.’

If that sounds familiar, don’t feel bad. Managing change is hard, especially in environments where change is the norm. Any new initiative that requires people to adopt a new behaviour and/or way of doing things requires a plan, so you give yourself the highest chance of adoption.

This is why understanding change management strategies and tools is such a great skill to have.

Why is managing change important?

There’s nothing more frustrating, disengaging and demotivating than working on something that then no one uses.

We all know that wasted work equals wasted £££ and potential turnover, as who wants to spend time working on something no one values, right?

Have a read at this article to understand more about the consequences of not managing change properly.

🚨 REMEMBER: You can have a great plan to manage change, but if you’ve designed something in complete silo then it will most likely fail. Design thinking (along with a growth mindset) is a great approach to making sure that everyone is part of the success.

Tips for managing change

Change Management is a vast discipline, and the level of depth and tools required in your initiative will depend on how complex the change you are trying to implement is.

For the sake of simplicity, I’m only going to focus on the following 6 elements:

Ownership
Business case
Buy in
Communication
Training
Measures of success and continuous improvement

Ownership

Assign an internal Change Lead. This person (or squad) will be responsible for:

Defining the business case or case for change.
Sharing business case with Leadership team to gain support. Defining who the project sponsor will be.
Developing the comms strategy and training approach along with the project team.
Defining measures of success and continuous improvement

Determining the Business Case (case for change) and get buy in

Prepare a business case

Building a business case is key to ensuring you get the right support and buy in from your team.

Here’s a blank example of a simple business case. This made up case if for an onboarding process redesign, contemplated after a period of high voluntary early turnover:

What’s the problem we’re trying to solve? 30% early (first 90 days) voluntary turnover in Engineering and Marketing department in the last 6 months. This is currently costing us £X in hiring costs (direct and indirect), time spent training new people, etc. Turnover cost calculator (you need to sign up to the Predictive Index).
How did we get here? By not following a standardised and effective onboarding process, employees have not been provided with the tools and guidance required to be successful within their roles.
What is the risk to the company if left unchanged? Continued talent leakage to voluntary turnover, which if followed by negative reviews in sites like Glassdoor — and combined with an already competitive talent market — will negatively impact or risk our commercial goals / strategy.
What do you propose to do to fix it? We will implement an improved onboarding process with a focus on co-creation, efficiency and culture. We will be working with line managers (and training where appropriate) to make sure they have everything they need to set up their new hires for success from day 1. We will be using the following measures of success to check the impact our changes are having in reducing early turnover (include measures of success as needed).
What are we hoping to achieve by implementing this change? We want to reduce voluntary early turnover by X% within the next X months. By doing this, we expect savings of £X (you can define this based on your turnover costs calculated above).

Find a project sponsor

When change comes from the top, it helps to create more buy-in. Once your business case is defined, get leadership support and sponsorship.

Communication and Training strategy

Communication

Clear communication is crucial for any change management initiative. There will be too many unknowns and probably a lot of ambiguity, so keeping your team in the loop and bringing them on the journey with you will definitely pay dividends.

Tips for managing communication during organisational change

Have your leadership team (project sponsor) communicate the change if required.
Communicate as often and as transparently as possible. All hands and ‘town halls’ are a great place to update the team on strategy and plans.
Set expectations: if you already have an action plan in place, share it. If not, lay out what you are doing to work towards one.
Keep your team updated throughout the duration of the project and any changes that come along.
If you have capacity (and if necessary), try to adapt your message based on the different personas in your company. This will increase the chances of answering the ‘What’s in it for me?’ or ‘What’s the impact on me’? questions and improve adoption rates.

📢 The Change Lead will need to act as a Comms coordinator, defining the internal message and providing guidance to leadership and other stakeholders on what and how to communicate change to the team.

What to cover in your comms strategy

When planning your comms strategy, make sure you answer the following:

What:

is the purpose of the message
content will be delivered

Who:

will deliver the message
will be your audience (everyone, managers, leadership, etc.)
needs to approve it

How:

will the message be delivered (format & channel: email, intranet, town halls, etc.)

When:

will the message be delivered

Simple Comms strategy template

Training

Identify areas where those affected by the change will need to be upskilled to carry out the new ways of working or process. This will require different levels of effort, depending on the complexity of the change and the impact it has on your team.

Think about the following:

will only comms be required?
will you need to develop reference materials, such as guides?
will formal training be required?
will this require a combination of all of the above?

Simple training needs assessment template

Measures of success and continuous improvement

A big part of managing change is making sure that what you’ve implemented is solving what you’ve covered in your business case. Everything that you roll out will probably need iterating, so understanding what to measure and how to collect feedback will keep your team engaged with your product.

Measures of success

How are you going to know if what you implemented is successful? If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it (or improve it!).

To continue with the example on onboarding used in our sample business case, some examples of KPIs you could use to understand if your framework is working are:

Principal:

Retention: voluntary terminations (90 days and 12 months) (as part of your business case)

Supporting:

Customer satisfaction — Hiring Manager
Customer satisfaction — New Hire
eNPS and engagement surveys

⚠️ REMEMBER: KPIs shouldn’t be looked at in isolation. They’re only a piece of the puzzle that helps put together a story.

Iteration and continuous improvement

You need to make sure you’re constantly collecting feedback on the model from your team. Remind your team that, as an agile organisation, iterating based on consumer feedback is important to you. Issues are almost guaranteed to pop up. Iterations are going to be needed.

Give your team a clear route to provide feedback and explain how you’re going to act on it. Test, iterate, repeat.