If your upcoming project is one of those business transformative roller coasters, then you should be forgiven if you feel a little anxious about how to plan for it. What special communication tactics should be included? What assumptions for timing of activities are relevant? Heck, who are the additional stakeholders that must be established as partners?

Specifics of the situation can guide you. If the stakes are high, bring in many support stakeholders (from the high-tech help of collaboration software and customer relationship tools, corporate communications with video conference software, to business side middle managers, legal, etc.) to meet with IT leaders to plan a change management strategy. An IT leader should actually be invited to an initial meeting by the sponsor of the change making this easier.

If the degree of resistance is expected to be high, plan to include positive but coercive management tactics and transition subgroups into the newly transformed business over time. If the population effected is large, then have many stakeholders plan for a complex change management strategy, including all the party tricks: incentives and information flow, training on new objectives/processes, authoritarian-style pronouncements and sanctions, and gradual transitioning of groups to the new way.

Change management is complex and commonly a part of IT efforts, yet it is rarely part of the IT organization’s expertise. Bringing in the right stakeholders in the planning stage can fill this gap and reduce the potential chaos.