Systemizing Your Reoccurring Changes

Take a moment and make a mental list of the system-related glitches, problems and headaches you've experienced over the last year. Is it possible that any of these could be identifiable, reoccurring and preventable? Could you actually systematize the fixing of some of your problems? Perhaps some changes in your system aren't even problems - just inevitable changes due to policy changes, growth, business realignment, new contracts, etc. If you know there are changes in your system that could be smoothed out and systematized but can't seem to think of any, here are some examples. What about changes in taxation due to regulatory compliance or moving into a new tax area? Perhaps you are growing and having increasing number of garnishments in different jurisdictions. Do you have unions where the contracts are periodically renegotiated? What about company reorganizations? Do you apply support packages periodically? Is there ever a need for a new wage type, personnel action, absence or attendance, etc? Are end users continually requesting new ways to obtain information from the system? Do you ever have new initiatives that affect system configuration? Are you consistently trying to rework the system to make it easier for end users to use especially with employee turnover? Perhaps you are finding out about a problem when the error actually happens in the middle of a critical process. I would suggest that you can take the panic, late nights, headaches, or whatever the effect is for you out of recognizable system changes by systematizing your change process.

There are definite benefits to organizing your change process. There can be an actual flow to the change process. Expectations can be set and realized. Panic can be removed from the equation. Testing can be done thoroughly. System slam-ins can be prevented. End users and the affected community can be properly notified if necessary. A systematized change process is usually more efficient than a non-systematized change process. Less surprise allows more credibility. Benchmarks can be created and analyzed. The only drawback is that it takes time to get organized initially and there will be opposition to organization. Also, care must be taken that the organization serves a purpose. The organized work plan should serve as a tool to usher changes into the system effectively.

The first step to this systematization is identification. Are there scheduled changes or changes that can be predicted (tax year-end legislative changes, leave accrual carry-overs, annual bonuses, contract negotiations)? Is there a point person who receives the initial information (tax notices like changes in company-specific tax rates, garnishment processors, the person who hires new employees)? Are there changes based on an identifiable event (acquisition, company reorganization)? Make a list of possible situations that can be predicted or anticipated early due to regular reoccurrence or notification to a point person. Next to each situation, list the periodicity or planned date and the person who would best pinpoint the start of the need.

Next, develop a planning process. Keep the planning process documented in a work plan which should at least include the goal of the project, the schedule of completion, an issues list, the steps involved in reaching the goal and the persons responsible for each part of the process. It is important that each person involved in the process has access to the work plan and be responsible for keeping his or her part current.

Besides the persons who actually make the changes, there are several types of key people who are essential to a successful system change.

Notice owner:

• Initial notification - who finds out about the change first? Identify what triggers the beginning of the process. For example, if there is paperwork, like a new garnishment or notifications from a taxing authority, who is the person that receives this. This person may not be the one who oversees the whole process, but just provides the initial information. Identify whom the person should contact to get the change process rolling.

Change owner:

• Information gathering - how many people are needed to put the change in place. If there are several people, perhaps a kickoff meeting needs to take place to sort through the information and determine the implications for workload, timeframe, cost, etc. 

• Scheduling - develop a timeline or work plan with responsible persons assigned and deadlines for planning, configuration, testing and rollout. If the change is typical, an old work plan can be used with little modification.  

• Oversight - keep track of the progress of the work plan and keep communication ongoing during the planning, configuration, testing, training, documentation and rollout phases. Oversee that the issues are being considered and resolved. Organize regular meetings if necessary to gauge the process. 

• Documentation - has documentation been updated or created? Has the work plan been updated with the lessons learned from the current change process? 

• Training - do employees need to be trained? Who is going to train the employees? 

• Review - once the change has been made and the project completed review how it went. It is very tempting to leave this step out, but taking the time to review will improve future changes. Note what went wrong, what could be better, and so forth.

Business owner:

• Affected people notification - determine who needs to be notified of the change, when it will take place and how it will affect each person.

• Information update - update any business documents and informational notices. For instance, does a website which houses information related to the change need to be updated?

On a very small level, an example of a change that can be fit into an organized change process would be the creation of a new earnings wage type. Since wage types serve many different purposes in payroll, the request for a new wage type may come from several different sources. However, the change process for implementing a wage type is usually pretty typical and can fit well into a work plan. At first, a meeting might be needed to determine the specific attributes of the wage type (name of the wage type, taxability, posting attributes, display on the earnings statement, eligibility to be included in savings plan calculations, special processing, permissibility on infotypes, etc.). Determine the schedule for implementing the wage type keeping in mind that there may be some post-implementation work to do before the wage type is ready to run through payroll. For instance, are there are large number of employees who need this wage type in their master data? In the work plan, identify the steps and assign persons responsible. Determine a reasonable interval in which to review the work plan for issues and progress. Communicate with the business owner to ensure that the affected people have been made aware of the new wage type. Does a notice need to go to the employees explaining this new earning that is going to appear on their pay stubs? Are the people who update the master data aware of the new wage type? Has documentation been created explaining the wage type? At the end of the process, review the implementation. Was anything forgotten and found during testing? What issues were encountered and were they resolved? Note your concluding thoughts in the work plan, so that during the next wage type creation, you can attempt to avoid the issues. Also, if a different person is going to oversee the next new wage type, the work plans from previous wage types will be very helpful, especially work plans with concluding thoughts.

Although you have a plan now in place, there are still obstacles.

• Employee turnover- as employees leave positions and are replaced with new employees, it is important to keep the new employees informed of their roles in any given change process. Whether the employee is the notice owner, part of the change process or an affected user, giving the employee advance notice is essential to smooth change processes. 

• Volume/workload - perhaps there are more changes than resources, or the magnitude of the change is much greater than the last time the change took place. If there is more work to do than employees to do the work, the change process will suffer in one area or another. The testing may not be sufficient and something is slammed into the system. Seemingly less important steps may be left until the very end, like sending out notifications to the affected employees. When there are not enough resources, the process usually slips into emergency skeletal mode where the absolutely essential tasks are only addressed. If necessary, modify the work plan, but try to keep all of the steps in place. Chances are that just as much time will be spent cleaning things up post-implementation as it would to cover each of the steps in the work plan. Continue to review the work plan and keep stakeholders in tune with the affect volume has on the project. Perhaps the stakeholders can provide more time or resources. 

• Unpredictability - some changes are simply not predictable or very abrupt. In these cases, it is essential to have a generic work plan where each of the steps is covered. Unpredictable changes with a generic work plan will go smoother than the same changes without a work plan. 

• Lack of communication - without communication among all the members of the teams, each person will not know the overall progress of the project. Also, interdependencies between groups will not be identified and timelines will lack importance. 

•  Lack of organization - if there is no organization, the work plan will flounder and there won't be any benefit of trying to have a routine change to the system. 

• Lack of follow-through - most members of the team probably have more things to do, even unrelated to the current project, than possible to get done in a day, week or month. If there isn't a specific person following-up on the progress of the plan, the adherence to the plan will be put on the back burner. Without follow-through, there is no accountability to the work plan.

Predictable, reoccurring changes can be molded into a systematic, organized, forward-moving plan. The benefits to organizing your changes far outweigh the initial time it will take to get them organized and the pushback you may get from team members. Schedule some time just to start identifying changes that can be molded into a work plan. Create a generic work plan and move toward fitting the known changes into it. As long as the organized change process serves a purpose, the organization will benefit.