Hello and welcome to our module, Planning the Transition. So far in this course, we've talked about getting ready to move, we've signed our contract, and we've put things in place so that we're ready to move. The topics we're going to actually talk about today relate to the importance of planning the move, it would be very unwise to just think you could move without a good deal of planning. We'll talk about the change management approach and the stages of change that we will noticeably go through. And it's very important to align our actions at each of these stages so that we get the right results. Planning and managing is actually critical to being successful when when we're moving to the cloud and moving to the cloud is a strategic long-term proposition. Key business processes need continuity, business as usual needs to be maintained, and the risk of failure is quite high. So it is very critical that we consider these things. So the importance of planning is right there in front of us. Being ready to move requires diligent planning, it takes time and it takes careful thought. We need to reengineer our business practices, so that we are ready when we do make the move. We need to re-align our architecture from our processes, our technologies, our infrastructures. Importantly, we need to re-skill the workforce so that we've got the right skills in place to able to support our new business models. And we need the requisite actors, trained and in place so that we're ready to move on day one. So now let's just have a look at our planning approach. Firstly, we need to think of it strategically. The future needs to be at front of mind, taking a long term view of things. We need to analyze our situation, so that we can clearly and confidently say that we understand the problem. We need to define our scope so we can focus our attention and do the right things and not the things that we don't need to do. And we need to design and clearly document what we're actually about to do. We need to produce work plans, which articulate how we're going to get there. We'll include milestones, that's what I need to achieve along the way. And importantly, to be able to describe the deliverables, what we need to produce to make this complete. Now let's look at our change management approach. We established last week that it begins with unfreezing as per Lewin's model. Firstly, we need to establish contact and this contact should begin as early as possible. This will allow us to create an awareness of the pending change of what's coming and how people are going to be involved. Importantly, it needs to answer the question, what's in it for me, for each of the stakeholders. There are certain stages of change that we actually go through. The first stage is primary contact and the purpose of this is to plant the idea in people's minds to create awareness and the outcome from is actual awareness in our communities. The engagement vehicle for this might be emails, bulletins, broadcasts, conversations, newsletters, etcetera. The second stage is where we start to consult and the purpose of this is to gain acceptance for what we're proposing to do here. And the outcome from that is understanding of the task at hand. Engagement techniques, we use for this, are focus groups, workshops, interviews, co-development with users. All of these things start to introduce the human interaction side of things. And finally as we mature in this process, we need to start to collaborate. Collaborate to create commitment. And the outcome of that will be engagement, where people have bought in, fully understanding what the new world is going to look like for them. Our engagement techniques we can use for this are around our sponsorship. Helping people to build their own components of what belongs in the future state, partnering with user communities or other stakeholders, supporting those communities and stakeholders, and identifying further opportunities to improve things. We need to consider the timing of this. In the first place, we need to make contact, preferably before the contract is signed, so that stakeholders from all walks are aware of what we're about to try and do. We need to think about when we consult, certainly after we've contacted them, and after go live. And then we need to collaborate in an ongoing sustainable fashion to continuously improve things and keep people engaged with the process. In this session, we've discussed the importance of`planning and looked at the different stages of change that we might go through. As you move to the cloud, we've identified the actions that you need to take and the messages you need to send, and how important it is to appropriately time those and focus to the audiences who are going to receive and understand those.
