Change (Mis)Management

Ever seen a 4*100 relay race where the pneultimate runner drops the baton just as the last person is taking off ? ERP rollouts remind of that often these days.

It ceased surprising me why so many ERP's are hated by users.  Of course I would hate it too if I am trained half heartedly for less than an hour, do not get hands on practice and am expected to perform correctly on PROD instance. The least planned part of any software rollout is the user training. No one has time to read thro fat manuals. No one has time to figure out each form. And first impression is the only impression on a user.  And neither HR nor IT departments plan for training at all.

Functional consultants should not anymore be creating user manuals. Instead they should use

gotomeeting, microsoft live meeting and other live video recordings to train their staff. 

A smart client of mine with a 40,000+ user base first implemented OLM and then used it to train every other rollout on oracle !

UAT mayhem

The project manager has decided to have a UAT 'walk through' instead of a full fledged UAT. Clearly the cry raised during CRP has shaken her up. And they want to take it in easy. However without a UAT when will the users be trained on the system ? How will they ever be able to support their users ? how will they sign off on the system ? Probably IT will trade off with HR...this is the political nature of 'change management' revealing itself...