Bite-Sized Change Management 1 – RAID Management – Why do it?

What is RAID and how can it help (all project-savvy readers can look away now…)?

Spending some time identifying and defining their management is all about RAID

What is RAID and how can it help (all project-savvy readers can look away now…)?

RAID encompasses all the things that can trip you up and leave you wiping mud from your face and thinking, “Dammit! I should’ve known that would happen!”. The acronym is short for:

• Risks – future events or outcomes that could negatively affect or derail the successful delivery of a change
• Assumptions – anything expected, but not certain. Some assumptions may not be as obvious as others
• Issues – events or outcomes that have occurred that will have a negative effect on, or that will derail the change
• Dependencies… deliveries, outputs, or events between your change delivery plan and a third-party that need to be in place for a successful delivery of a change

All major corporate organisations approach business change as a day-to-day event and will have processes and teams in place to identify, define, and deliver it.

Do small and medium businesses have that same capability? Not so much.

So, why use a RAID management process?

Because most change involves doing something you haven’t done before – or something you’ve tried previously that didn’t go very well.

As you’ve probably grasped, RAID items manifest as a range of unknowns that will need to be identified, resolved and controlled through RAID Management.

Approaching these unknowns in a systematic way helps to define the things in your change you don’t understand, makes you look at them in detail and resolve the problems you didn’t know you had.

Those ones that would leave you with mud on your face and less money in the bank.

Managing RAID builds certainty, confidence and makes change a happier and cheaper place for you and your customers.