Shipping The Change: How To Transport The Change You Want

There are different ways to ship or transport your new dashboard in your organization. You can either break it gently, or introduce and implement the changes all at once. There is no right or wrong approach but there will always be advantages and disadvantages. It is also a case to case basis. There are some organizations that have a small staff that works well together, so implementing all at once may be easier. A company with a larger reach may have to delegate and break it gently. But size isn’t the only issue. There are several factors to consider to successfully transport the change you want.

It is not just about knowing the changes that you want to implement, but also about knowing, how, when and where to make the transition.

In a webinar hosted by KISSmetrics and presented by Moz.com‘s Alyson Murphy, Convert shares these insights on how to scale analytics in a maturing organization. Web analytics are reports or charts that track the daily to weekly progress and statistics of a website. There are 6 key areas you need to focus when scaling analytics for your organization;

• Data infrastructure
• Data integrity
• Data access
• Data visualization
• Infrastructure change process
• Data utilization in the people in your organization

However, if you don’t know how to ship all these changes then all your changes have been for naught. It is not just about knowing the changes that you want to implement, but also about knowing, how, when and where to make the transition.

Shipping The Change

Shipping Options: minimum viable product (breaking things gently), also known as the MVP approach, and the ‘All at Once’ method. You can only choose one but still, but the goal remains constant – transport the change the best way you can.

A dashboard is the product of a new system that you want the end-users to use so their efficiency and productivity can be measured on the next level. This will give the management a better view on how each group and each of the members handle their job. This will answer questions such as: how many? How long? How accurate? Whether you like it or not, the shipping part next to planning is one of the most critical stages, and this will be a determining factor in the success of your project.

[Tweet “Shipping is when you are able to see how your designed system will behave in production.]

According to Alyson, if everything was executed well during the planning stage, there is a high chance for the shipping to fall right into place regardless of the method you choose. Alyson named the shipping options into: minimum viable product (breaking things gently), also known as the MVP approach, and the ‘All at Once’ method. You can only choose one but still, but the goal remains constant – transport the change the best way you can.

Options for Shipping

As the carrier of the process change – you are tasked to choose how you want the transport to take place. Again, there is no wrong or right choice, just advantages and disadvantages.

In an article posted by John Jones, DeAnne Aguirre and Matthew Calderone for Strategy, they mentioned: “No single methodology fits every company, but there is a set of practices, tools, and techniques that can be adapted to a variety of situations.”

As the carrier of the process change – you are tasked to choose how you want the transport to take place. Again, there is no wrong or right choice, just advantages and disadvantages. The choices can be made on an executive level, or it can be handled dynamically, as a group.

• Minimum Viable Approach – in the minimum viable approach or MVP, you are introducing the change per stage or phase. The number of phases will depend on how big the project is. One good thing about using  the MVP approach is it allows you to re-evaluate at each phase. This gives you the chance to ship the change sooner while the people can have something to work on. They will have the access to the old and the new system until you can finally integrate and let them use the one that you created. This approach is ideal for large organizations so you can keep track of the changes needed per stage. One major disadvantage of MVP though, is it can slow down the shipping process because you are changing and executing the change from time to time.

• Shipping all at once – The change will happen simultaneously across all the departments in the organization. The old system will no longer be accessible once the new system is up and running. This works well for small organization because you can easily see where the potential challenge is. However, if change is necessary, you need to disable the access and leave the people with nothing to use. This can be quite risky.

Which approach is better? It depends on what you think your organization needs. and what you think will be best for your organization moving forward.

Which approach is better? It depends on what you think your organization needs, and what you think will be best for your organization moving forward. You should know how many teams you have so you can structure the change one each level. You can also assign a leader per team so you will not have to talk to all members, but allow a few to deliver the message for everyone. Empower your people so they do not only become a team player, but an initiator and implementer of the process of change. You can visit our blog at Convert for more information about analytics, optimization, and testing.