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Large Scale Change Management Initiative
J. Forrest was brought in to support an IT – financial system implementation that affected 3500 financial users. The initial scope of the project was to develop a series of Competency-Based assessments that users had to pass in order to gain access to the system following 20 technical training courses. After 8 weeks on the project, he was called on to provide more in-depth change and project management for the initiative by working with internal stakeholders, instructional designers and training and change management personnel.
Issues
- Resistance from Business Process Owners
- 18,000 assessments needed to be completed in just under 4 months.
- IT solutions required heavy customization with little time to develop and validate
- Influencing without authority in a time of chaos and uncertainty
Solutions
- Stakeholder summit meetings
- Online course evaluations and assessments
- Weekly reporting filled with graphs and charts to inform decision making
Results
- Through his recommendation, course evaluations were conducted using an online survey tool. 7,500 evaluations were conducted electronically in 4 months---allowing course corrections and 8 weeks of saved registrar time.
- The Financial Controller requested a status update 6 weeks into project, a PowerPoint was ready within 20 minutes and shared with the Board of Regents within the week.
- Administered over 18,000 assessments in one quarter. Passing rate for courses was over 95% which ensured a smooth transition from one financial system to the next. If an individual failed an assessment, they would be prevented from using that component of the financial system. Knowledge gain and challenging assessments needed to be paired with an easy to use and effective gate for allowing system access.
- As the facilitator of all Stakeholder Summit meetings, he helped aid the adoption of the new processes while repairing decade old broken fences.
The client indicated that:
"J. Forrest provides strong expertise in the area of competency management and training evaluation. He was able to take a large, disorganized program and provide structure and substance to it in a way that allowed us to get information out of the program for future improvements. His ability to integrate with [our] constituents during times of high stress was excellent."