Concepts of change management

Understanding change management is essential for successful information systems development and implementation in the 21st century

Introduction

In this assignment work I would like to present the features and concepts of change management and the effect caused in an organisation in the 21st century. I am explaining this through by an organization Infosys Technologies in which I worked after completing my bachelors. After knowing the concept of change management through the lecture and seminar periods, I can say that the change management is very important as I can compare the concept of change management and it is very useful in developing the organisation.

Introduction to my Organisation:

Infosys Technologies Limited was started in 1981. Today our organization is a worldwide leader of IT and consulting with Overton of over US$ 4 billion.

Infosys is defined a delivers and design technology which enabled business solutions . Infosys also provides a complete range of services with leading technology providers. Infosys is Indian based company which is in the top ten business companies. They are a wide range of clients from different sectors as financial, technical, Software and many others.

They offer different services they are application services, product engineering, maintenance, testing and validation services, etc. They use Global Delivery Model which is based on the principle of choosing the work place where the talent is best available, where it has least amount of risk and best economic sense. Infosys believe in developing the trust with the communities in which they operate to attain for long period as a corporation.

As soon as I completed my B. Tech in the field of Computer science I joined in the courses like Unix and . Net. These courses where completed in about six months of time and I attended the certification exams for these courses as well. After completion of course exams I applied for job interviews and then I got into this company called Infosys as a technical support. Then I got training in communication skills as it is very necessary for the job requirement.

Here in the company the person who is responsible for every aspect of the project is manager. The manager should evade all the problems that come within the project and he should be able to get the successful outcome from the given resources. In a project it’s not only the resources that are important but also the technology in order to run successful organization.

Some of the transformational changes are taken by the senior manager so that will be useful in developing the project lifecycle. Because the organization wants to make changes so we can transform from senior management to a transformational leader. Employees were hired who have good skills, communication skills and also who have quality to enter into the project development team. During the training periods the managers will be checking the employee’s skills and improvement. After few weeks if there is a difference in their performance the employee may be removed from the project and again will be put through training period.

Definition of Change Management:

The name Change management itself derives as managing the change. Change management is derived as the process, equipment and techniques that are used to manage the change processes of people side. Change management is very important in this competitive world as in every organisation or company change occurs at some point this may occur due to change in technology , working conditions , to achieve the required outputs , or to compete the competitors etc., By this we can say that change management is very important for a successfully running company or organisation.

The levels of changes in the Change Management. They are

1. Alpha Change
2. Beta Change
3. Gamma Change

1. Alpha Change:

2. Alpha change is a gradual incremental planned approach that emerge for a short time and which focuses on a particular point within an company or organisation. Alpha change helps in identifying the objective and delivers the required change.

   When i was working in a company or organization i had a short time change where i was working on UNIX and on the other side we had an another project which was based on JAVA has been in pending and the deadline was about to come. So, our project manager has assigned some of our project members to the JAVA project. So we had three hours of JAVA training every day and worked hard to finish the project in time. We were successful in delivering the project on time. There was no difficulty in this type of change but the employees must be mentally prepared.

3. Beta Change:

4. Beta change is a gradual incremental emergent approach which develops over a period of time to make the complete change in the organisation. This change is a planned change.

5. Gamma Change:

6. Gamma change is nothing but a transformational and full attempt to create a change in the organisation. This is a high range change. Gamma change involves high risk when compared to alpha and beta change. In this change we cannot expect the output.

Lewin’s Model of Change:

This model consists of three stages. They are

1. Unfreezing
2. Changing or Movement
3. Refreeze

Unfreezing:

Unfreezing is the change where they violate down active ways of doing things, discarding the conventional methods and behaviours patterns and introducing a new methods and behaviours. Education, communication, participating in decision making etc.., is some of the techniques used for unfreezing.

Changing or Movement:

Change or movement is the change where they move towards the proposed change, where they learn new methodologies. This is the change where problems arise and they tackle it efficiently it is a time of trail and error.

Refreezing:

Refreezing is making the change permanent. It is the final stage where new concepts become habitual, which includes developing new concepts and establishing new interpersonal relationships.

Investigate:

Every company or organisation has a strategy . The main duty of this strategy is to find out the strengths and weakness of the company and finding the different solutions. For investigation we have three main models. They are

1. SWOT Analysis
2. PEST Analysis
3. System Model

1. SWOT Analysis:

   SWOT Analysis was the main analysis for our organisation. SWOT is abbreviated as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

   In our organization the main Strengths were good team management, brand, staff, market position, financial position, services and growing . The weakness of our company was sales channels, lack of new technologies and competitive vulnerability. The opportunities of our company were new complimentary market , strategic alliances like funding, sales, products, market position for growth and the main threats of our company were the economy, lose of key staff , cash flow, falling sales, decreasing profits etc..

   By the SWOT analysis we came to know about the company’s Strenghts, weakness, opportunities and threats which helped in improving the company’s weak points and work on it more.

   Pest Analysis:

   PEST Analysis is abbreviated as Political, Economical , Sociocultural And Technology factors.

   Political Factors:

   The political structure of India is stable but there is a hung parliament fear its due to the parliaments unclear majority , the customer projections and the terrorists attacks, the govt. Position on marketing. The government decides whether to give more IT works or not.

   Economical Factors:

   The economical factors consist of economy rates, the employee level of per capita. In 2009 our company IT domestic spending of IT is raised by more percentage. The rental has been decreased due to real estate decline.

   Sociocultural Factor:

   The sociocultural factors by the word itself derives as the social and cultural . Social and cultural always vary from country to country as it depends on the different criteria’s like the domain religion, language, customer time, population , strong and weak opinions etc…

   Technological factors:

   Technology plays a vital role in competitive advantages and is important of globalization. In our company the technological factors are it uses the low cost technologies and provides modernization challenge and opportunities.

   System Model:

   The seven s model is used to know about the company and its accuracy. It mainly has seven elements they are

   1. Style
   2. Skills
   3. Systems
   4. Strategy
   5. Structure
   6. Shared Values
   7. Staff

   From the Above diagram we can see all the seven-s are connected to each other. So if there is any change in a single element it effect all the other elements. Here the first three elements i. e.., the strategy, structure and the systems are the hardware of the organization and rest of all the elements are the software of the organization.

   Decide:

   After completion of investigation now we have a clear idea to set some objectives which are used for implementing the change. They are by training the employees in new technologies , by keeping the goals for the projects individually and motivating the employees by creating the short time wins during the change effort and by planning a get together for the achievements and installing all the new technologies into the system.

   Enable:

   Enable is known as the planning stage for implementing the changes and allocate the recourses. It is very important for every organization or a company to know the different phases because if they find any error we can overcome them easily. They are mainly four phases. They are

   1. Exploration Phase
   2. Planning Phase
   3. Action phase
   4. Integration phase

   5. Exploration Phase:

      In this phase organisation are consults for better implementations of the modify. There are different types of consultancy. Schein (1987) suggests three important models of consultation. They are

      1. Expert Model
      2. Doctor Patient Model
      3. Process Consultation Model

      Expert Model:

      In expert model if a problem arises the model organisation identifies its problem and the consultancy is the expert which gives solution to the organization. According to E H Schein (1985) the boundary of tasks are clearly identified boundary and are highly specific. The type of tasks the expert model applies on technical or task issue and the diagnosis is done by client assumption as the client is right and the consultants do what ever the client tell them.

      Doctor Patient Model:

      In doctor patient model the consultant acts as a doctor and the organization as the patient. In this model consultancy diagnose the problem which arise in an organisation and tells the solution to the organisation and the organisation is dependable for applying the solution whether to apply the solution or to find an other solution but they have to track on the solution which was given by the consultancy. According to E H Schein (1985) the margins of task is quite specific but with the potential development depending on what the output is and the tasks which are done by doctor patient model is generally connected with human organizations.

      Process consultancy model the key role is in between the consultant and the clients trust. The consultant identifies the problem in the organization and gives the solution. In this process we unfreeze the system and then install the new change and when the change is installed successfully then we have to refreeze the system. According to E H Schein (1985) process consultancy model has a very wide potential boundaries and although the consultant comes out with a new problem solution methods this is solved in joined way. The output is very much responsible on both consultant and client so they need to have a high level of trust between them.

      Planned Phase:

      After the problem is solved the implementation of the change should be planned. Here in this planned phase the expert plays an important role in the plan of change. In this phase we will know what are the step[s in planning ? And what are the stages involved in planning? The consultant will help the company in each and every phase as if they will not be able to solve the problem then they will go for the help of experts.

      Action Phase:

      Only experts are meant to do the actions. They will be involved from the very first stage till the end stage.

      Integration Phase:

      The last phase is the integration phase. Each and every company have their own requirements which will be fulfilled in the implementation of the planned and action phases and then the employees will start their work on their projects. The employees will be given targets to reach both individually and group wise.

      Act:

      Action is the change which is done by persons only the position of the person may vary from phase to phase. The team leader plays the main role as he is one who guides the team members.

      Conclusion:

      I came across all these changes in the management when I worked in the company but then I could not realise what exactly it was. But after coming here for Masters and learning about Change management and systems implementation I came to know that change in an organization plays a vital role. Change is not only needed for the organization but also individually as individually it helps in making a successful life ahead. Change does take time but later it gives successful results that are desired. Finally it is important for the organization to pace up with business needs and to also overcome the competitors.

      references

      1. http://www. uky. edu/~drlane/capstone/health/trans. html
      2. http://www. marketingteacher. com/Lessons/lesson_PEST. htm
      3. http://www. infosys. com/about/what-we-do/Pages/index. aspx