Change is Challenging

We’re making a very simple change at work; merging our personnel directory site with our enterprise social network.

What does this mean for the user? They’ll be able to search for people using a wider variety of search terms, by putting them all in one search box. The underlying data source is the same so the search results should be the close to the same.

What does this mean for the project team? Solving a myriad of technical issues – from increasing the capacity of the social network platform, to making sure both phone and mobile numbers display. And we’ve encountered a couple of issues that will have to be solved some other way – as they involve tasks that are not related to a social network.

The change will go into effect at the end of this month, given that the directory was the most visited site we started communicating about it back in September. First with key stakeholders and then more widely. The reactions have been interesting – ranging from “yes it’s better” through to “I’ll get used to it” through to “it will be much worse I’ll never find everything”.

We’ve just taken on an extra person as a conversation manager temporarily to help with the increase in questions. When I talked to her about the role I mentioned that some of the people asking questions might be grumpy. She laughed “grumpy people are my specialty”. She may turn out to be our secret weapon in helping people adapt to this change.

It’s a good reminder that in any IT project the challenges are not just technical. Change affects people, and it’s a challenge to help them adapt.

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