Boost efficacy, efficiency, and transparency for OCM and learning workstream
Palo Alto, Walldorf, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, February 1st, 2022
If you are a project manager, or a project team member, getting started with the topic of organizational change management (OCM) while implementing SAP cloud, you may come across the Solution Adoption workstream in SAP Activate. This workstream comprehensively covers roles and responsibilities, tasks and activities for OCM, and end user enablement aspects of your project. During the Discover and Prepare phases the work stream mandates setting up the OCM team and its network and conceiving of the main concepts. Throughout all the SAP Activate phases you might want to share, transparently, with your stakeholders the key decisions taken and outlined in the main considerations, principles, and workshop results of this work stream to get buy-in, support, or foster solution adoption with the implementation project.
Figure 1 Cloud solution adoption workstream tasks in context of SAP Activate phases
Typically, for the team setup and the concept development you would want to run a few workshops with key change management experts and leadership from the business areas who will be affected by changes to the business processes. In these workshops, change related topics will have to be discussed, which tend to spark lively debates. A certain amount of debate might be productive for acceptance and support, yet proper structure and process may be needed to agree on outcomes in a timely fashion, even more so when these workshops are conducted virtually.
SAP Activate supplies guidance and accelerators to keep such workshops focused. New accelerators support you in conducting effective and efficient setup and concept workshops for the first phases of the solution adoption work stream. They are templates in MURAL, a virtual collaboration app.
Check them out here:
- OCM team setup and network concept,
- Stakeholder engagement concept,
- Communication concept,
- Organizational transition concept,
- Learning concept,
- OCM efficacy,
- Solution adoption sustainability.
For transparent sharing of workshop results and progress throughout the solution adoption work stream an overview template has been provided. Check it out here: Overview template.
These templates were developed by the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Expertise Services team in collaboration with the SAP Activate team and MURAL, based on input received from practitioners in the field, OCM experts, projects managers and consultants.
How to use the Mural templates
- Setting up the OCM team, OCM network and respective concepts
- Stakeholder Engagement
- Communication
- Organizational Transition
- Learning Concept
- Measuring Effectiveness Concept
- Sustaining Change Agility
- Overview Template
Against intuition we put the Overview template at the end. Some of the data to fill it with content are decided in workshops using the other templates. I promise you’ll see it all coming together at the close.
Who should be invited to the workshops
The team to be put in charge of organizational change management and the network to support it are to be set up in the first set of these workshops (see below Figure 2 Recommended Roles and Responsibilities in the OCM Work stream). This OCM team & network will then be directing and facilitating change management activities in conjunction with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud project. At least for team setup and initial concept development you would probably want to involve change management experts and leadership from the lines of business who will be involved in changing business processes with SAP S/4HANA Cloud or be affected by those changes. Managers might want to appoint further leaders from their teams to share insights and carry on with activities as laid out in accelerators “Set Up OCM team” and “OCM Concepts”.
Figure 2 Recommended Roles and Responsibilities in the OCM Work Stream (from Accelerator ”Setup OCM team”)
How to use workshop templates
In the Mural outline function and on the left-hand side of this template you'll find guidance and tips on how to use this template within the context of the Solution Adoption work stream of SAP Activate for SAP S/4HANA Cloud implementation methodology.
On the left-hand side of the canvas, you'll also find the workshop description, detailed instructions, agenda, OCM work stream context, and further links about OCM in the context of SAP S/4HANA cloud implementations.
5 Steps to create your OCM team and work package concepts
Working with the workshop templates costs about 30 minutes of preparation for the facilitator. The facilitator would copy the template into the team’s workspace. They would want to unlock canvas elements the team shall be accessing for hyperlinks or focus. If this is going to be the first time to work with MURAL for most participants, facilitators would also want to introduce them to MURAL concepts and usage patterns, e.g., by sharing the intro video or performing some warm-up in a different canvas upfront. The workshop itself suggests a time requirement of roughly 90 minutes (about 1 and a half hours). It consists of five steps:
- All participants shall read the template description and get an understanding of the main tasks of this work package as per the agenda
- All participants shall review the supporting documents for this work package, namely accelerators “Set Up OCM team” and “OCM Concepts”.
- The facilitator guides through the workshop activities on the agenda. The agenda requires participants to respond to a few conceptional questions per project phase with as many distinct “sticky notes” as they can imagine within the set time. The facilitator would read out all sticky notes and cut obvious duplicates. After all questions to a project phase have been responded to participants shall vote on the responses. Voting prioritizes responses for activities preparing the following phase or phases. The facilitator shall then rearrange sticky notes according to their priority, with the highest on top.
- For each guiding question document the prioritized key decisions under the respective column. You can do that, for example by re-ordering them from the top down or assigning ordinal numbers according to their priority, one being the highest priority. If you work with the Overview template (see more details in chapter 0 below) you may want to transfer the prioritized key decisions to the Overview template as well.
- Finally, define what the immediate next steps for this work package should be, who will take them on and by when they need to be carried out. You may want to add further details per step in the comment section.
Setting up the OCM team, OCM network and respective concepts
The Prepare phase of the solution adoption work stream mandates setting up the OCM team and its network and conceiving of the main concepts. The first set of these tasks would need to be done by the project team itself, while later activities could be taken on by the appointed OCM team members. Template OCM team setup and network concept.
Figure 3 MURAL Template "OCM Team Setup and Network Concept”
There are key decisions the OCM team must make prior to performing OCM activities. The results of the decisions made will define an approach on how to deliver all OCM work packages outlined in Figure 1 Cloud solution adoption workstream tasks in context of SAP Activate phases, above.
Learning Concept Template
The Learning part of the Solution Adoption work stream aims to supply user training to end users throughout the transformation process. Where self-enablement and standard training are considered insufficient, role-based user training shall be developed based on the results of workshops in this work stream.
Who should be invited to this workshop
According to Figure 2, Recommended Roles and Responsibilities in the OCM Workstream, above, the bearer of the training lead role should be the main responsible for all training and enablement activities. In practice, user enablement, the preparation of respective content and actual training, require many supporting minds and hands across multiple disciplines and organizational units. Training leads may want to invite to the Learning concept workshop leaders from the lines of business to be affected by business process changes, key users and others experienced in creating or conveying learning content for end users. Other select core and departmental OCM team members might be helpful to have, too. Learning concept template.
Figure 4 MURAL Template “Learning Concept in SAP Activate Workstream for Solution Adoption”
Measuring Effectiveness Template
This template appears to pick up in the Explore phase of Activate, but in fact you would still conduct the workshop during the Prepare phase. You are supposed to figure out ahead of time in some detail how you will be measuring the success of organizational change activities to be planned as part of the Change Impact Analysis. The change impact analysis itself and respective planning for addressing its implications is best conducted using this set of accelerators which you might want to consider in preparation for this workshop.
For continued success with your organizational change plan and measures you may want to build patterns of a feedback loop with the change agents. Frequent check-ins with them allow for plan adjustments to remain incremental throughout Realize, Deploy and Run phases. This pattern may support employees in expecting continuous change, contributing to addressing its challenges and adapting to it with ease. OCM efficacy template.
Figure 5 Mural Template "Planning for OCM Efficacy"
Who should be invited to this workshop
The same candidates you would want to take part in the change impact analysis workshop might be good candidates to invite to this workshop on defining measurement criteria, KPIs (key performance indicators) or Key Results pertinent to organizational change as well. Beyond your regular OCM team members and departmental resources, you may want to invite experts to define such criteria and a workshop facilitator. Because change agents will be instrumental in reinforcing the benefits of changing and report back on perceptions and adoption propensity over time you may want to include some of them in this workshop.
Overview Template
The purpose of this overview Mural is to share with the organization results of concept and planning workshops conducted by the project and Organizational Change Management teams. It may serve as a dynamic communication tool for project management, showing progress in evolving concepts and plans, or incorporation of feedback to plans as contributions emerge from topical workshops and working groups along the OCM work stream. You may want to share this Mural as a PDF at milestones, perhaps before or after Quality gates (yellow diamond-shaped squares at the bottom), or even share access to the Mural itself.
Figure 6 Mural Template "Solution Adoption Workstream Tasks Overview"
Obviously, this template emulates the structure and tasks of Figure 1. As with the work package templates, this Mural template explains itself on the left-hand side of the canvas and through the Outline function in Mural. The Outline walks you through most of the areas on the canvas, some of them with detailed instructions. The “Procedure” area on the left points out major steps.
During the Prepare phase you can transfer key decisions from the work packages above into the sticky notes in this Mural. You may have additional documentation which you could hyperlink to the document symbols or upload into the Mural outright, for example corporate strategy papers, digital transformation agenda, etc.
In the Explore phase you may want to collect outcomes from the Change Impact Analysis and reflect resulting plans in the respective planning areas. Adjust and refine your plans as you execute them and receive feedback through change agents and other channels (see star symbol). Show on the canvas where and why you incorporate feedback and adjusted plans as a signal to employees their feedback is being heard, respected and acted upon.
During Realize and Deploy phase prepare the business units to take on OCM, self-enablement, and other learning activities from the central OCM team for the entirety of the Run phase. This set of tasks evolves out of the sustainability work package.
Note, if your organization has already established a Customer Center of Expertise (or Excellence, Customer COE), you may want to adapt that center’s capabilities to take on some of the OCM and learning related tasks and activities for the Run phase. This topic area may deserve its own blog, for now please refer to SAP's support page on Customer COE and this SAP Activate accelerator on CCOE Strategy, Governance and Organization.
As you use these MURAL templates, how do they help you in your solution adoption work stream, save time, improve alignment among stakeholders? Where do you see room for improvement? Please let us know at expertiseservices@sap.com.
Comments to this blog are encouraged.
Credits
As mentioned, several people and parties had been involved in conceiving, designing, editing, reviewing and publishing these new templates and this blog. Special thanks go to Jan Musil and Lauren Bettuzzi of the SAP Activate team, Wout Hermans, Max Richter, and Maria Laura Jofre of MURAL, Michelle Otun, Olivier Guillen and Stan Byrd of SAP’s Cloud Success Services, as well as Irene Dennehy from our team, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Expertise Services.
- SAP Managed Tags:
7 Comments
