Change management plan template

Your team has just decided that they want to implement a huge change that will shift operations for most of the company. There’s a lot of planning, communication, and preparation that needs to happen—a change management plan template can help you keep everything organized.

Using a change management plan template can help you and your team organize your change management plan so you can get through major organizational changes with ease. Creating and maintaining a change management template can help you approach organizational change thoughtfully and ensure you don’t skip any steps of the process.  As your organization grows, you can adapt your change management plan template to grow with it. 

What is a change management plan template?

A change management plan template is a repeatable framework that you can use to establish change management plans. You can use this template to set the stage for organizational change, so that when change happens, your team can prepare for the resulting process shifts.

Change management plans are used to help transition teams from one process to another smoothly. They’re often used when processes drastically change in a way that could disrupt day-to-day operations. A change management plan template can help guide your team through any large transition with step-by-step guidance.

How to set up a change management template

A change management plan template is a valuable tool to have. This framework gives you a way to make sure all of the details of your change management plan, key stakeholders, and any lessons you learned are captured in your next change rollout. 

Change management templates are best used when they’re in a tool that makes it easy to replicate and apply on a project-by-project basis. Digital project management tools can make this easy—simply create the initial change management template and then duplicate it. From there you can add all of the details that make that specific change management process unique. 

When you’re creating a change management plan template, it’s important to include these key aspects of the project:

• What’s being changed: Is a major process getting changed? Is your team switching key software? Either way, your team needs to know what’s changing, so they can adjust and prepare how they work.

• The status of the change: Knowing where your team is in the change management process can help other managers understand how to implement it on their own team. The plan can also help you track progress and make sure things are on schedule.

• Who is responsible for each step: If anybody has any questions about the process, there should be a dedicated point person or stakeholder responsible for each step. This helps maintain accountability and provides a point of contact for stakeholders.

• When the change will take place: Knowing the timing is essential for team leads to communicate changes. This allows adequate time for people to transition from the old process to the new one.

How to use a change management plan template

Using a change management plan template is the first step of your change management plan. This template will help you and your stakeholders identify the important timing and details of the entire process.

The beauty of using a change management plan template is that you can tailor each use to a specific project. The idea is that you use the same general framework consistently, but the details of each change management plan will be different.

This is best done using a collaborative project management software that everyone on your team can access. When your change management plan template lives in one central location, everyone on your team has the ability to access it when they need to.

Integrated features

• Timeline View. Timeline View is a Gantt-style project view that displays all of your tasks in a horizontal bar chart. Not only can you see each task’s start and end date, but you can also see dependencies between tasks. With Timeline View, you can easily track how the pieces of your plan fit together. Plus, when you can see all of your work in one place, it’s easy to identify and address dependency conflicts before they start, so you can hit all of your goals on schedule.

• Subtasks. Sometimes a to-do is too big to capture in one task. If a task has more than one contributor, a broad due date, or stakeholders that need to review and approve before it can go live, subtasks can help. Subtasks are a powerful way to distribute work and split tasks into individual components—while keeping the small to-dos connected to the overarching context of the parent task. Break tasks into smaller components or capture the individual components of a multi-step process with subtasks.

• Custom fields. Custom fields are the best way to tag, sort, and filter work. Create unique custom fields for any information you need to track—from priority and status to email or phone number. Use custom fields to sort and schedule your to-dos so you know what to work on first. Plus, share custom fields across tasks and projects to ensure consistency across your organization.

• Dependencies. Mark a task as waiting on another task with task dependencies. Know when your work is blocking someone else’s work, so you can prioritize accordingly. Teams with collaborative workflows can easily see what tasks they’re waiting on from others, and know when to get started on their portion of work. When the first task is completed, the assignee will be notified that they can get started on their dependent task. Or, if the task your work is dependent on is rescheduled, Asana will notify you—letting you know if you need to adjust your dependent due date as well.

Recommended apps

• Dropbox. Attach files directly to tasks in Asana with the Dropbox file chooser, which is built into the Asana task pane.

• Slack. Turn ideas, work requests, and action items from Slack into trackable tasks and comments in Asana. Go from quick questions and action items to tasks with assignees and due dates. Easily capture work so requests and to-dos don’t get lost in Slack.

• Jira. Create interactive, connected workflows between technical and business teams to increase visibility around the product development process in real time—all without leaving Asana. Streamline project collaboration and hand offs. Quickly create Jira issues from within Asana so that work passes seamlessly between business and technical teams at the right time.

• GitHub. Automatically sync GitHub pull request status updates to Asana tasks. Track progress on pull requests and improve cross-functional collaboration between technical and non-technical teams, all from within Asana.

FAQs