In the world of project management, one key challenge Change Managers often face is how to make sense of the UAT. While some might be enthusiastic participants in the UAT, some others might struggle with making sense of what to do during this phase because UAT is not a Change Management activity per se.
Being an active participant in UAT provides Change Managers the following advantages:
Current (As is) versus Future (To be)
Participating in the UAT provides some great insights into the Change Impact Assessment, e.g. the following:
What roles will be impacted?
What sort of training will be required?
How to train the impacted teams about the changes, e.g. face to face or virtually?
Will there process changes, e.g. the automation of any manual processes or vice versa?
If the current system has any report generation capacities, will those be retained after the change? If not, how will the amended system work in terms of report generation capacities? Will these impact the BAU roles and responsibilities of the impacted business unit team members?
Will the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the impacted business units need to be updated?
How much time and resource will be required to train the impacted business units?
What will be the new support system for the amended system? Will it be served by the existing tech support team, or will it be a new support team?
Enough representation of the impacted business units on the UAT team
Participating or even engaging with the Tech PM’s helps the Change Manager get an idea as to whether there has been enough representation of the impacted business units in the UAT team or the UAT team consists of professional Test Analysts only. A mix of professional Test Analysts and impacted business unit team members is the most ideal situation, as the former group provides a methodical structure to the UAT activities and the latter group often becomes champions to increase the adoption of the change in the production environment; the latter group also develop expertise in the system changes which is an asset to the impacted business units. Participating in UAT enables the Change Manager in their ongoing engagement with the impacted business units, as checking on the representation or any related questions will be appreciated by the business units. They will feel that they are getting the hand holding they require.
Better knowledge to ask questions
and challenge assumptions
With enhanced knowledge of the systems, a Change Manager gets confidence about the new system and they can relate their knowledge to the Business Requirements Document (BRD) and check with the relevant Business Analyst or Project Manager to see whether all the functional requirements have been covered. Technically this is not the Change Manager’s responsibility, but a cross checking ensures the project is returning the desired value and supporting the roll out in a way that will sustain the right practices.
Writing Training Documents and FAQs
This is a great advantage as the Change Managers can easily utilise the screenshots from the UAT environments in their training documents. In addition, UAT experience gives them the confidence and comfort to engage with fruitful discussion with participants from impacted business units during training sessions. Change Managers can utilise the knowledge obtained from the UAT in writing FAQs too.
Coaching and communications
As in writing training documents and FAQs, Change Managers can utilise knowledge and experience of UAT in creating coaching tools and writing communications, especially for mid-level and front line managers. These managers have great influence over their employees. If Change Managers can give them confidence by providing the right tools and information and knowledge, they do their best to maximise user adoption.
Considering all these benefits, it is always a great idea for Change Managers to actively participate in UATs.
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