In my final year at University our Head of Department changed our whole years curriculum to Change Management. After being involved in the roll-out of a few new systems both internally here at WWW as well as for some of our clients, I now share her emphasis on the topic.

People hate change…
And thats because people hate change….
I want to be sure you get my point.
People really hate change.
They really, really do.

Peopleware, the brilliant book by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, explains the issues surrounding the change better than anywhere else I’ve read. The users of the new system experience the change in four stages:

When we implement a new system we as software developers, need to understand that more often than not, the new system is forced upon the users by the upper levels of their organisation.

The users are usually satisfied, even if mildly so, with the current system as they are masters at it! And so the learning curve begins its spiral downward into Chaos as we are bombarded with support calls, a high percentage of them born out of the fact that they are upset that they were good at the old one but now they are not, thus the emotional reactions. The logic that the new is better and more efficient is not possible for these users to comprehend.

Eventually users are able to navigate themselves out of the chaos through the hope and realisation that the new system does have some good stuff, which encourages the further use of the system, and once practiced enough the upward part of the curve is reached and the new is mastered.

Obvious remedies to shortening the length of the learning curve is greater training opportunities and preparing users beforehand for the ensuing drama, however as DeMarco in his book points out, the chaos phase is unavoidable, and a necessary part to the software development process (users transforming from the old to the new).

Of course we all know the new system is better; cleaner; easier; more efficient with better reporting, the old was the clumsy slow centipede, but now…..now the new is as pleasing as the rare caligo superbus butterfly of South America.