Top 10 change management best practices for IT and organizations

Change management is a structured set of tools, procedures, and strategies that allow organizations and individuals to surf the tides of inevitable change smoothly. However, implementing it is not an easy task. If you want to rise to the ranks of successful change managers, understand the best practices in change management.

What is change management?

Change management is a structured approach for ensuring that changes are implemented smoothly and successfully within an organization, focusing on people, processes, and technology.

It consists of all the procedures and tools essential to guide teams or a company through transitions. The fundamental objective of the change management model is to cultivate adaptability and minimize disruptions. Another objective is to optimize the likelihood of success throughout the process.

Overview of change management best practices

Crafting an Organizational Change Management (OCM) strategy poses its challenges. But you can manage the process with these proven practices:

• Evaluate and comprehend your company's risk tolerance, tailoring your plans accordingly. Recognize that there is no universal solution in OCM. Grasp your company's culture and other aspects to integrate them seamlessly into your strategy.

• Stay ahead of escalating employee and customer demands with the help of automation and AI technology. Improve the management and implementation process with data-driven insights from generative AI systems, mitigating repetitive manual processes prone to human errors.

• Prioritize collaboration by communicating your goals with your team and key stakeholders. Through streamlined and unified communication channels, effortlessly prevent task repetition and redundancies.

• Revamp your Change Advisory Board(CAB) model to align with modern companies. Do away with slow and bureaucratic CAB processes. Seek CAB approvals exclusively for the riskiest changes, and use change management software to virtualize and make CAB real time. This eliminates the need for in-person meetings with prolonged wait times.

• Select familiar tools and applications that are comfortable for your development team and integrate them into your chosen OCM tool.

Top 10 change management best practices

Let's examine the ten specific practices that organizations use to navigate transitions successfully and minimize disruption during periods of transformation.

1. Mobilize active and visible sponsorship

Executives and senior position holders play an essential role in being active sponsors of change. Research from Prosci details that an active and visible sponsor is the leading contributor to an effective transition. Leadership visibility creates momentum and demonstrates commitment to your teams.

Key actions for effective sponsorship:

• Start your change management activities early in the project lifecycle to identify potential resistance points and address concerns before they escalate.

• Maintain open communication channels with all stakeholders throughout the transition.

• Understand your role thoroughly within the transitional phases. Clear role definition ensures consistent messaging across all organizational levels.

• Encourage colleagues personally through one-on-one meetings and team sessions. Direct engagement from sponsors reinforces the importance of the change and provides opportunities for employees to voice concerns in supportive environments.

2. Apply a structured change management approach

A structured approach can provide you with the necessary guidance required to stay on track. Formal and proven approaches make the entire process reliable and repeatable. You can apply the initiatives consistently. Your approach should be:

• An established system that has proven its worth and can be repeated to yield consistent results.

• Easy to tailor to your specific needs. Going with a customizable approach will allow you to bend the methodology to the unexpected whims of your scenario.

• Functional, irrespective of the size of your organization and the scope of the proposed changes. A scalable approach allows for implementing changes at various levels of a project’s life cycle without sacrificing additional resources to modify the approach itself.

• Accessibile. All team members should be able to apply and understand it in every phase of the process.

• Able to exert its influence across multiple changes.

3. Engage with front-line employees

Front-line employees experience the direct impact of organizational changes in their daily work. Their acceptance and adoption determine whether transitions succeed or fail. And this makes their engagement a priority throughout the change process.

Strategies for effective front-line engagement:

• Clarify the personal benefits each change brings to individual employees. The "What's in it for me?" question drives personal motivation and helps workers assess how new processes improve their daily experiences.

• Build relationships with teams facing the most significant impacts from transitions. Trust develops through consistent interaction and demonstrates your commitment to supporting employees through challenging adjustments.

• Include front-line workers in planning discussions and welcome their input. Employees who contribute to change design feel ownership over outcomes and become advocates for successful implementation within their peer groups.

4. Communicate frequently and openly

Miscommunication is the bane of any successful operation, including change management. Change encounters resistance from 28% of employees due to feelings of anger and anxiety that top-down communication triggers. Your employees must understand the ongoing change.

However, many companies forgo this step. Under top-down "tell" strategies, only 20% of the workforce comprehends the impending change. In contrast, employing open-source "talk" communication results in a 54% understanding of the change among the workforce.

Communication best practices:

• Establish multiple channels for information sharing and dialogue.

• Maintain transparency about both benefits and challenges associated with changes. Acknowledging difficulties demonstrates respect for employee intelligence and prevents the credibility damage that occurs when leaders downplay legitimate concerns.

• Communicate consistently throughout the entire change lifecycle. Regular updates maintain visibility and accessibility, preventing the information vacuum that breeds rumors and speculation among worried employees.

5. Engage and integrate with project management

Change management and project management function as complementary disciplines that strengthen each other when properly integrated. Align these processes across employees, operational procedures, management approaches, goals, and tools to achieve more efficient transitions.

Integration strategies:

• Incorporate change management tasks directly into your project plans. This integration ensures change activities receive appropriate time and resource allocation.

• Encourage collaboration between change management and project management teams. Regular interaction between these groups minimizes miscommunication and creates a shared understanding of priorities and constraints.

• Align change management plans with project timelines to prevent scheduling conflicts. Coordinated timing ensures adequate preparation for each transition phase and prevents overwhelming employees with simultaneous demands.

• Consolidate overlapping roles and responsibilities between teams. Clear role definition eliminates duplication of effort and ensures accountability for specific deliverables.

6. Dedicate change management resources

Your change management resource allocation should reflect the scope and complexity of planned transitions. Larger organizational changes require proportionally greater investment in change management activities to address the expanded stakeholder base and increased implementation complexity.

7. Engage with and support people managers

People managers serve as critical bridges between executive leadership and front-line employees during organizational transitions. Their position enables them to translate strategic vision into practical guidance while communicating employee concerns and needs upward to decision-makers.

Key people manager responsibilities:

• Maintain consistent communication with affected parties throughout the change process. Regular interaction keeps managers informed about implementation progress and emerging challenges.

• Build understanding and awareness across organizational levels. Managers help front-line employees comprehend the rationale for changes while ensuring leadership understands the practical implications of their decisions.

• Provide tools, resources, and support to change managers navigating transitions. Access to templates, communication materials, and expert guidance enables managers to support their teams effectively.

• Encourage continuous engagement at the micro-level throughout project lifecycles. Ongoing interaction allows managers to identify and address small issues before they escalate into significant obstacles.

8. Create a comprehensive training and development program

Employees need to understand not just how to use new tools, but also how their roles and responsibilities evolve within the changed environment.

Effective training program elements:

• Assess skill gaps before designing training content. Understanding the difference between current capabilities and required competencies allows you to target training resources where they deliver the greatest impact.

• Deliver training through multiple formats to accommodate different learning preferences. Combining instructor-led sessions, self-paced online modules, hands-on practice, and reference materials ensures all employees can access information in ways that work for them.

• Schedule training close to implementation dates. Training delivered too early results in knowledge loss before employees apply new skills, while training delivered too late leaves employees struggling without adequate preparation.

• Provide ongoing support resources after initial training concludes. Quick reference guides, help desk support, and peer mentoring help employees apply their training and build confidence with new approaches.

9. Monitor and measure change progress

Measurement frameworks establish clear indicators of change adoption and effectiveness. These metrics provide objective data for assessing whether changes achieve intended outcomes and where adjustments may be necessary.

Key measurement approaches:

• Define success metrics before implementation begins. Clear targets enable you to assess progress objectively and make data-driven decisions about resource allocation and intervention strategies.

• Track both leading and lagging indicators throughout the change process. Leading indicators like training completion rates and communication engagement provide early warning of potential issues, while lagging indicators like productivity metrics and error rates confirm actual impact.

• Conduct regular pulse surveys to assess employee sentiment and identify concerns. Quick, focused surveys provide real-time feedback that allows you to address issues before they undermine change success.

• Establish feedback loops that translate measurement insights into action. Data collection without corresponding adjustments wastes resources and frustrates stakeholders who see their input ignored.

10. Sustain changes through reinforcement and continuous improvement

After initial implementation and measurement systems are in place, it is important to focus on embedding changes into standard operations and preventing regression to previous practices.

Sustainment strategies:

• Recognize and celebrate early adopters and change champions. Public acknowledgment of employees who embrace new approaches encourages others to follow their example and reinforces desired behaviors.

• Integrate new practices into performance management systems. When performance evaluations and reward structures align with changed processes, employees receive clear signals about organizational expectations.

• Continue monitoring adoption metrics after formal implementation concludes. Ongoing measurement allows you to identify backsliding and address it before old habits become reestablished.

• Establish continuous improvement processes that evolve changes based on experience. Employees who see their feedback incorporated into refinements feel valued and remain engaged with ongoing optimization efforts.

Understanding the change management process step-by-step

Having examined the best practices that guide successful transitions, let's explore the steps that transform change management principles into implementation.

1. Assess organizational readiness and capacity

Before initiating any change process, evaluate your current state and capacity to absorb transitions.

Understanding organizational readiness involves examining multiple dimensions. Your company culture, previous change experiences, current workload, and available resources all influence how successfully you can implement new initiatives.

Capacity assessment identifies constraints that may limit change success. Resource limitations, competing priorities, and stakeholder resistance patterns reveal potential obstacles requiring mitigation strategies before you commit to specific implementation approaches.

Realistic assessment of readiness and capacity enables you to sequence changes appropriately and allocate resources where they deliver maximum impact.

2. Identify drivers for change

This phase of change management strategy entails listing every factor necessitating organizational change. This proves challenging due to the many reasons prompting such shifts. Some prevalent catalysts for organizational change are:

• The introduction of new leadership at the organizational helm or within its branches and departments.

• Alterations in the composition of the organizational team and analogous internal elements.

• A noteworthy impetus for organizational change arises from the adoption of new operational frameworks, new technology, process innovations, or enhancements to existing business models.

External factors also contribute to organizational change, with commonly observed triggers including:

• Significant fluctuations in market conditions

• Revamping of existing technologies and the introduction of novel systems

• The influx of new competitors

• Socio-political and economic developments in target markets or operational regions

• Changes in regulations

• Adjustments in customer needs

3. Assess the impact on employees and business processes

While change is inevitable, resistance to it is also quite natural. The desire to change is not common when individuals, i.e., your employees, are already in a comfortable position. Thus, you must establish a clear communication line to implement a change successfully.

This is to understand how the changes you put in place will impact your employees and your business processes in the long run. You need to put Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in place to help you assess the effectiveness of the change in the future.

4. Establish objectives and goals for change

Clearly defining your objectives is one of the central aspects of forming a cohesive strategy. Before jumping into execution, always plan out carefully. Try to establish well-defined milestones. Document the tasks to complete, changing responsibilities, and potential problems.

You can create the objectives and reasons for a change and craft goals you need to focus on meticulously, despite more changes piling up. You need to make sure that the change initiative is purposeful and satisfies the overarching goal of your business.

Take the following steps when selecting your objectives:

• Reach the core purpose for initiating change

• Evaluate the position of your business—your strengths, weaknesses, and risk tolerance

• Engage your stakeholders in this decision

• Keep your goals realistic and achievable

• Take care that your goals don't stray away from your company's overarching goals and culture

• Take a detailed account of the resources available to you

• Establish a system of feedback and dialogue

5. Plan the implementation strategy

Now that you know what you are working toward, it is time to determine the strategy you will adopt when putting your plan in motion. Implementation strategies vary depending on your specific needs, organization size, and scope of the change. Here are some common strategies that you can employ for change implementation:

6. Develop a timeline and action plan for change

Once you have formulated a plan, mark out a chronological list of tasks that need to be performed. Assign a specific and strict deadline for each of your planned tasks. This helps with managing the changes since if you miss a deadline further down the road, you can reestablish it and provide increased priority to the task.

7. Create an effective communication plan

Change management communication is essentially the process of increasing awareness and support for organizational shifts. It facilitates stakeholders' understanding of the changes, their implications, and why change is necessary at that particular time. Change management communication ensures stakeholders know what's important, delivers information and documents on time, and provides channels for questions and feedback.

According to a Gartner study, only 34% of all transformation initiatives that companies undertake are successful in the end, meaning that close to 70% of all transformations fail. To create an efficient communication plan, make sure you involve the appropriate parties at the appropriate times and end up with an authorized plan that takes every aspect into account by following these four stages.

a. Justify your actions with an explanation:

Set and review objectives on things you need to get done in terms of communication.

b. Keep a record of your communication strategy:

• Frame clear messaging tailored to the needs of each group.

• Write down your strategy for achieving your communication objectives.

• Specify your target audiences, messaging, schedules, roles, and assessment strategy.

c. Assess and complete your communication plan:

• Go over your communication strategy with members of the group and project leaders.

• Take into account suggestions while finishing the approval plan.

d. Give your approval:

• Submit the plan for the final authorization to your executive sponsor.

• Request the other leaders in your executive sponsorship to review the strategy.

8. Understand resistance to change

Employee resistance to change is one of the trickiest and most stubborn issues that corporate executives deal with. Such resistance can manifest itself in various ways, including a continuous decrease in output, an increase in "quits" and requests for transfers, recurring arguments, gloomy animosity, spontaneous or slowdown strikes, and the rise of numerous arguments as to why the change would fail. This resistance, even in its more trivial forms, might cause problems.

When leaders come across resistance to change, they frequently use the tired excuse that "people resist change" to explain the situation without doing any further inquiry. But the hard fact is that the industry needs to adapt constantly. This is especially true of the crucial "micro" adjustments that occur regularly, such as adjustments to work practices, standard office processes, desk or machine locations, staff assignments, and title changes.

Distrust in the company's leadership or the organization in general is one of the biggest factors contributing to resistance to change. A lack of confidence impacts both employee turnover and whether employees give leadership the benefit of the doubt when problems occur.

Encouraging employees to be transparent is much more critical when attempting to manage a transition. Share information with employees as frequently as possible.

IT/IT service management (ITSM)/IT infrastructure library (ITIL) change management best practices

General change management principles apply across all organizational contexts. But ITIL and ITSM change management best practices involve specialized approaches that address the unique characteristics of technology changes and their potential impact on service delivery.

Categorize changes by risk and urgency

ITIL frameworks distinguish between standard, normal, and emergency changes based on their risk profiles and business impact. This categorization enables you to apply appropriate approval processes and resource allocation to each change type.

Standard changes follow pre-approved procedures for low-risk, routine modifications. These changes, such as password resets or standard software installations, require minimal oversight because teams thoroughly understand and document their processes and outcomes.

Emergency changes address critical issues requiring immediate action to restore service or prevent significant business impact. Expedited approval processes enable rapid response while maintaining appropriate oversight and documentation.

Automate low-risk change approval

Automation accelerates standard change processing and reduces administrative overhead. When you automate approval workflows for pre-authorized changes, your IT teams can implement routine modifications without delays.

Automated systems evaluate change requests against predefined criteria and route them through appropriate approval chains. This automation ensures consistency in decision-making and helps focus on high-risk changes.

Integrate with service catalog

Connecting change management processes with your service catalog creates visibility into how modifications affect service offerings. This integration helps you assess the downstream impact of infrastructure or application changes on the services your organization delivers.

Service catalog integration enables you to notify affected stakeholders automatically when changes impact services they consume. This proactive communication reduces surprises and allows service consumers to prepare for temporary disruptions or capability changes.

Maintain a change calendar

A centralized change calendar provides visibility into planned modifications across your IT environment. This calendar helps you identify potential conflicts, coordinate related changes, and communicate planned activities to stakeholders.

Your change calendar should include sufficient detail for stakeholders to understand the nature, timing, and potential impact of each planned change. This transparency enables business units to plan their activities around scheduled maintenance windows and avoid conflicts with critical business periods.

Best practices in change management interactive data

Words may be deceiving, but numbers don't lie. While you have already seen some real-life data to support our claims, let's take a look at some stats that will solidify these practices as the real deal:

• When employees are involved in change strategies, the probability of success increases by 24%.

• Miscommunication and distrust make employees the most resistant to change, at a whopping 41%. Thus, communication is the key when managing change.

• Leadership is a central factor. 74% people think leaders need to do more to understand why people are resistant to change. Moreover, changes are 5.8 times more likely to be successful in businesses where the top brass communicates transparently and persuasively.

Evolving practices: Agile, DevOps, and change management

Traditional change management approaches that organizations developed for waterfall project methodologies face challenges in modern IT environments where continuous delivery and rapid iteration cycles prevail. Organizations adopting Agile and DevOps practices require adapted change management approaches that maintain governance without becoming bottlenecks.

Shift left and continuous delivery

Shift-left practices enable your teams to identify and address potential issues before they reach production environments and minimize risk that individual changes create.

Continuous delivery pipelines automate testing, approval, and deployment processes for code changes. These pipelines enable frequent, small-increment changes that carry less risk than large, infrequent releases while maintaining appropriate controls and audit trails.

Smaller change increments

When each change addresses a focused set of modifications, you can implement, test, and validate changes more quickly than with monolithic releases.

Smaller increments also simplify rollback procedures when issues arise. Reverting a focused change causes less disruption than unwinding a large release containing multiple interdependent modifications.

Feature flags and trunk-based development

Feature flags separate code deployment from feature activation. This capability allows your development teams to deploy code to production environments while controlling when end users gain access to new functionality.

Trunk-based development practices minimize conflicts and integration challenges by having all developers work from a single code branch. This approach, combined with feature flags, enables continuous integration while maintaining control over feature releases.

Balancing speed with governance

Your governance framework should distinguish between changes requiring human review and those that can proceed through automated pipelines. This risk-based approach ensures appropriate oversight without slowing down routine modifications that pose minimal threat to service stability.

Getting started with change management in your organization

Start with the practices that matter most to your organization. Critically evaluate your approach and adapt it by understanding these practices depending on your geography, demographics, revenue, expectations, and other parameters. Integrate the practices you select into your daily routine.

With Freshservice, you can do all of that in a few simple clicks. Freshservice gives you top-class IT service management systems that let you adapt to any changes in a jiffy.

• Accentuate workflow: Improve agent productivity by intercepting incoming tickets through ML-powered responses and escalating only the ones that need a human touch.

• Better collaboration: Streamline service management by uniting your teams' visions and missions on a unified and shared platform.

• Integration capabilities: Bring consumer-grade user experience to popular applications like MS Teams, Slack, and the Freshservice chatbots.

Freshservice's unified service management solution gives you access to tools that make weathering the tides of change much easier:

• Automation: Versatile automation capabilities that let your team focus on the more strategic side of things. Freddy AI, the powerful GenAI solution, lets you personalize your automated messages, provides support with Freddy AI Copilot, and gives contextual insights.

• Integrated service management platform: Consolidate service management on a singular platform. This allows you to bridge communication gaps, improve reaction times, and heighten brand awareness.

• Quick roll-outs: Easily deploy any and all changes and updates using Freshservice's highly customizable and no-code platform.

Never fear change. Embrace it; learn from it. And use these change management best practices to extract the utmost success from opportunities for change.