I hear time and again from company executives that implement changes to their development processes that while there is initial gains, ultimately the business value that drove the change wasn’t realized and the processes slipped back. Engineers call this process churn – “What is our process du jour?”.

Many times processes get put in place with no actual adherence to the process itself. There may be motions of compliance – certain reports produced, visible components showing compliance. But when you get down to where the actual fingers hit the keyboards, there is another process entirely.

The more that process churn happens in an organization, the more likely the engineers have developed a subversive process that will continue through any changes at the top of the organization, even organizational changes! The stories engineers can tell are endless.

Why do organizations make changes?
Organizations make changes to increase their business value. That is, to be more efficient, reduce costs, be more responsive, increase production, share resources, etc. Our global market has required us to reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, increase employee productivity, etc. Thus changes are required.

Why is it so hard to make changes stick?
While there are probably many answers to this question, I would like to put forward one reason that I have seen over and over again – implementing changes without managing the transitions. While companies properly address the change, they mismanage the transition.

Example: Iraq War
One example of a major change with poor transition is the Iraq war. The US forced a change of Iraq’s government leadership fairly easily. However, it was unable to gain the “business value” of the change because it was unprepared to handle the transition to a new government. The US will seek to lose billions of dollars on this change and there is still risk that we will never gain value from the change.

Example: Corporate Acquisitions
Large corporations make big changes every day as well – we saw 4 multi-billion acquisitions just today in Oracle buying Seibel, EBay intending to purchase Skype, Ford selling off Hertz and Wachovia agreed to buy Westcorp. Each of these major changes will require major transition plans to retain the business value of those deals. There are a multitude of examples of bad acquisitions, usually stemming from not managing the transition from one corporation’s culture to the other’s.

Development Process Changes
That leads us back to what would appear to be a much simpler problem than the Iraq war or multi-billion dollar corporate acquisitions – changing your corporate processes. Based on the results that I have seen, it does not appear to have a much better success rate.

The number one reason I see process changes not return business value is due to not managing the transitions of the people involved in the processes. In an agile process deployment, there are tremendous role changes taking place. Self-directed teams alone account for a major portion of mismanaged transitions for both management and the team members.

In William Bridges’ book Managing Transitions, he explains the difference between change and transitions. Changes are situational. Transitions are psychological. He goes on to explain the three phase process that people go through in dealing with the transition from one state to another brought about by change.

1. Ending – letting go of your previous state and entering the transition
2. Neutral zone – the in-between time when the old state is gone, but the new state isn’t fully operational.
3. Beginning – coming out of the transition

While seemingly boring, the in-between “neutral zone” is actually the most critical phase of the transition. The in-between time is when all of the learning actually takes place to get from the old state to the new state. However, it is exactly this in-between time that most people determine that the new process is not working and either give up or modify the plan.

It can be a difficult time because neither the old way nor the new way is working. However, it can also be the most creative and innovative time that actually allows your development teams to customize the process to your organization’s culture and have it stick. If managed properly, it can generate a better result than you actually planned – improving your business value beyond your expectations!

Changes are required in our global economy. Either learn to manage the transitions that are required to realize your business value, or you will not be in business for long.