The roles and responsibilities for delivering organizational change management in a cloud implementation depend on the size and complexity of the project.
In small projects, it is usually the project manager, or a business leader, who takes over the change manager role. In larger implementation programs, however, you will often find that a change management expert is added to the project team. This person then takes over the planning and implementation of organizational change management activities either in a part time or full-time assignment. This allows the project manager and other project experts to focus on the functional and technical side of the cloud implementation supported by the change manager who keeps track of the people-related topics and challenges.
For large implementation programs covering various cloud solutions, affecting many users and different locations, there is usually a high need for change management support that a single expert can’t cover. Thus, the necessary activities are assigned to several experts forming an organizational change management team.
When such a team is set up, the respective roles and responsibilities must be clearly defined and documented. This prevents irritations and double effort and fosters a smooth delivery. In addition, the required skills to fulfill the different roles should be elaborated upfront to ensure that the right people are staffed, or that necessary upskilling and training activities can be conducted upfront.
Depending on the available resources and skill set of a company, such an organizational change management team might consist of internal experts, external consultants or – most often – a combination of both.
The following chart gives you an idea how such a team set-up might look for a complex, large-scale cloud program. Click on the pictures to learn more about the specific roles!
In addition to the role descriptions shown above, it is also helpful to define the amount of time that must be invested to fulfill a role – both for the internal and the external team members. Often, change management roles are only part-time assignments, and the role owners remain in charge of certain line activities or support several projects in parallel.
And of course, regardless of the project size, there are usually people within the organization who support the people side of the cloud project without being officially assigned to the project: Experts in the HR, training and communication departments can provide important input and thus contribute to make the cloud implementation a success.