How to implement successful product change management

Software products are never fixed and finished. They always need to be improved and updated. For example, glitches need to be fixed whenever they arise, and the experience you present to your customers should be continually upgraded.

Making these changes efficiently and in a way that satisfies customers can be challenging. Let’s look at what’s needed to implement a successful product change management process.

Product change management is a strategy used to optimize results when making changes to a product. It also involves measures to reduce disruptions caused by these changes.

Here’s a run-through of what we mean by product change management:

• Identifying priorities for changes: this means looking for common problems and pain points your users experience when using your product.

• Communicating with stakeholders: you need to make your case for the changes you’re proposing. This will involve discussions about the budget, timeline, and potential risks.

• Testing new features: as part of product change management, you’ll want to identify any issues and ensure that the changes are truly improving the product.

What are the five Ps of change management?

The organizational change model—also known as the five Ps—can be applied to product change management.

• Purpose: why are we making changes? What are the goals?

• Philosophy: the underlying principles that will guide the process. This could be a commitment to make the product easy to use.

• Priorities: what are the most important aspects of the change? You may need to compromise on some issues due to budgetary or time constraints. For example, if you’re proposing four new features, which are priorities that fit your main purpose?

• Practices: the actions needed to implement the change. This includes the technical specifications of the changes and who is assigned to each component.

• Projection: the image you will be presenting to the public. This includes marketing and educational efforts to show users how the changes will benefit their experience with your product.

Change management serves several key functions:

• It ensures changes result in improvement. While change is inevitable, it’s not always positive. You need to manage changes and guide them in the right direction. When a feature is introduced or upgraded, you also must confirm that it performs as intended.

• It helps you clarify your goals and vision. You don’t want to make changes haphazardly. Instead, you need to identify the purpose and ensure the plans are moving you toward your objectives.

• It clarifies roles in the process, such as who is responsible for implementing the changes.

• It helps you deal with stakeholder concerns and pushback. There’s always a certain resistance to change. Part of change management is anticipating and responding to pushback.

• It creates a timetable for testing the quality and functionality of new features. By consistently testing, you can catch problems early.

Every software has its own unique challenges. However, all change management should include the following characteristics:

Addressing key pain points

Companies are often criticized for making product or software changes that don’t really add significant value to customers. Superficial changes, such as making the appearance more stylish, do benefit customers in a way. However, your first concern should be addressing their pain points and any challenges they are facing with your product in its current state.

Analyzing user behavior

While it’s helpful to ask users what they believe needs improvement, it can be even more insightful to track them. People may not always tell you their pain points or even be consciously aware of them.

Improving onboarding

Onboarding is crucial for new users. If the process is too long or painful, you’ll lose many customers before they have even experienced your product.

For customers taking advantage of a free trial, the ease of onboarding is often the difference between them signing up or quitting after the trial period. Introducing a concise video tutorial or a streamlined user guide might speed up onboarding.

Researching the state of the market

Part of product change management is considering the current state of your industry. Are the changes you’re planning in line with the latest industry trends?

For example, you might find that generative AI is currently used in many applications in your industry. As a result, introducing or upgrading such capabilities could improve your product’s marketability.

Studying the competition

One motive for change is to keep up with or outshine your competitors. Product change management should involve analyzing your competition, including the features, marketing campaigns, and price points for their products. This can help drive your product change strategy.

Providing choices for customers

Today’s customers use a wide variety of software, apps, and services. One way to make a product more appealing is to show how it works seamlessly with other services people are using.

Ensuring compatibility and scalability

Changes sometimes bring unanticipated issues. Before moving forward, ask your development team the following questions:

• Will the changes disrupt customers who are using older versions?

• Will the new version be able to perform all the tasks the current version can?

• How easy will it be to make future updates?

While every company has to create its own strategy, several key components should always be included.

Here are the steps you should follow for a successful product change management plan:

Identify your goals

The first step is to clearly outline what you want to accomplish with the changes. Why is it necessary to make changes at this time? Are users experiencing difficulties with the product? You may also need to justify changes from your team or company’s point of view.

In addition to listing the benefits of the improvements, point out the dangers of inaction. This could be a decline in customer satisfaction and losing ground to competitors.

Getting the buy-in you need can be the most arduous part of the process and may take time and patience. This is why identifying and communicating your goals is so important.

List KPIs

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are needed to ensure the change is moving forward smoothly and delivering the results you wanted.

Having metrics and data to point to when informing stakeholders of your progress is helpful for ensuring their continued buy-in.

Your KPIs could include the rate of users who are adapting to the changes. For example, if you have invited customers to upgrade, what percentage are doing so? If a new feature was added, how widely is it being used?

Develop a communication strategy

Effective communication is of paramount importance when creating and executing an effective product change process. A solid communications strategy would consider the following:

Key stakeholders and their interests

This includes everyone who has an interest in the product, from executives to customers. Determine who is likely to be receptive and resistant to the changes.

Appropriate communication style

You need to tailor your approach based on the needs and background of the person or group you’re talking to.

For example, executives will be interested in the bottom line. Developers will want to know about specs and features. Customers will care about functionality and cost.

People may have reservations about change for various reasons. Be sure to explain how you’ll consider their interests as the changes are implemented.

A plan for publicly announcing the changes

To ensure widespread adoption of the changes, you need to let both current and potential customers know why they are beneficial.

You should communicate this message through multiple channels, such as your email newsletter, social media, advertising, and videos. Press releases are also good for getting more coverage and communicating the reasons for the changes.

Provide training and documentation

Software changes seldom move forward without issues and challenges. Even when everything is working smoothly, you’ll need to provide consistent training to everyone who needs to be up to date on the project. This may include managers, customer service personnel, and beta testers. The support team should be trained as early as possible.

Documentation is another crucial aspect of change management. Document new features, testing, results of user surveys, and other key analytics. You may need to make adjustments to your strategy based on your findings.

Collect data and feedback

You need data to back up the case for change.

Collect data and feedback from users and members of the product team. User research should include both qualitative and quantitative methods. Focus on specifics so that you can identify exactly which parts of the product need tweaking.

When asking questions, allow for open-ended feedback, but also let people choose from predefined answers (“yes,” “no,” or multiple choice).

Build a team to implement the changes

When putting together a change management team, draw from multiple departments or stakeholders. You don’t want everyone to represent the same point of view.

For example, if the team is only made up of programmers, you can miss crucial issues such as budgeting and how non-technical users interact with features.

When the team represents a diverse group of stakeholders, you’ll be more capable of making changes that work for everyone. 

Educate customers

It’s easy to underestimate the time and expense of communicating the advantages of product changes, but this is a key aspect of implementing successful product change management. When planning your product change strategy, be sure to allocate sufficient resources to marketing and education.

Existing customers will need to appreciate the benefit of upgrading the product. New customers need to be persuaded to sign up for the first time.

Not all customers will embrace the changes right away. You can keep these customers satisfied by offering rollback functionality, allowing them to restore the previous version of the software. Another option is to continue offering the older version alongside the new one.

Offer ongoing support

While support is always important, it’s especially crucial during periods of change. You need to make sure customers have multiple ways to access support and have their questions answered. 

After the updates are released, you may want to offer extended support to ensure that you can respond to queries promptly.

Consider the benefits of incremental development

The timeline for rolling out changes is a key consideration in your product change management plan.

While it may seem preferable to introduce the greatest amount of change as quickly as possible, this isn’t necessarily the best approach. Incremental development, where you break down the improvements into small, manageable stages, can be advantageous.

Making effective changes that serve users’ needs requires ongoing testing, tracking, and tweaking. It’s often preferable to have a long-range strategy where you introduce an update, test the results, and make adjustments as needed. This approach allows you to make continuous improvements without committing fully to a large-scale change before you know that it’s going to be successful.

Microsoft is one of the best product change management examples of an incremental strategy. They typically release smaller updates regularly.

Another example is the way Google updates its search engine algorithm. As Search Engine Journal points out, Google releases major updates every few years but more often makes incremental changes to previous updates.

You should expect to encounter some challenges when implementing product changes. Some of these may be technical issues, while others may be more psychological.

Here are some of the main obstacles you’re likely to face and some guidelines on how to deal with them.

Resistance to change

It’s typical for team members, management, users, and other stakeholders to put up a certain amount of resistance to major changes. They may worry about potential problems or wasting time and resources.

In some cases, people have anxiety about their future place on the team or in the company after the changes have been made.

The best way to alleviate resistance to change is to communicate clearly and consistently. Both group meetings and one-on-one discussions can go a long way to clarifying issues such as job security and future roles for employees.

Budgetary challenges

Improving a product can be expensive. Parts, testing, marketing to educate users on the updates, and other expenses are always a factor when deciding the scope and nature of changes.

When setting a budget, keep these points in mind:

• Look for ways to minimize costs.

• Be ready to compromise. Stakeholders may not agree to all your requests.

• The incremental approach discussed above can help manage the budget as costs are spread out over time. You might propose making limited changes now and, if they are successful, further updates a year from now.

Changes may not align with your target audience

Certain changes can harm your customers’ perception of your product and encourage them to seek an alternative. They may even change your target audience altogether.

New features may be challenging for some users, demanding a higher level of tech proficiency. This could limit your pool of target customers and demand for your product, as some users may feel that the learning curve is too steep. This is why testing, user feedback, and target audience analysis are essential.