Using change management to achieve success in second generation mobile GIS implementation
Jennifer J. Nieland Wisconsin Public Service Corporation 700 N. Adams Street Green Bay, WI 54307 Telephone: (920) 433-1513 E-mail: jnielan@wpsr.com Abstract In 1995, Wisconsin Public Service Corporation (WPSC) deployed GIS viewing software on 300 mobile, rugged PC’s at twenty offices across our service territory. At that time, the hardware and software solutions were considered state-of-the-art. In 2002 the project to upgrade the mobile GIS software and rugged PC hardware became a reality. On the surface, “upgrading” sounded like a relatively simple project. After digging in, the project team realized that even though WPSC achieved a large degree of success with mobile GIS over seven years, there were still many challenges to face on the trail ahead. This paper focuses on the implementation of second-generation mobile GIS and rugged PC’s for the field workforce at WPSC. Our current success can be attributed to three factors. First, lessons from the past showed us the need to improve field acceptance of mobile computing, increase the PC skill level of our field workforce, and provide training designed specifically for mobile workers. Secondly, we employed change management philosophy from the start of the project. This allowed us to focus on the importance of communication, participation and education with the field workforce being affected by the upgrades. Finally, as a result of our implementation plan, we created a technology infrastructure across the corporation to serve the needs of mobile workers, including GIS. This includes a plan to regularly review the needs of mobile workforce and to keep pace with the constantly changing mobile computing environment. Remember the Alamo: first generation mobile GIS at WPSC All of us are familiar with the phrase “remember the Alamo” even if our memories of U.S. history cloud the story of the courageous stand of Colonel Travis and his men against the forces of Santa Anna. Mobile GIS and rugged PC computing has a long history at Wisconsin Public Service (WPSC). At the current rate of technology, seven years is a long history! It began in 1995 with the deployment of GIS Viewing software running on ruggedized, pen-based tablet pc’s, at the time considered “state of the art”. The GIS Viewer offered rapid display of gas, electric, land and polygon facility maps, along with a wealth of associated facility and customer data. The tablet pc’s and associated docking equipment allowed the GIS Viewer to be updated through the corporate network. The update process was very simple. The pc was placed in the wall-mounted dock, and then turned on. GIS Viewer would download updates via the network to the pc. Updates were provided every eight weeks. The initial deployment of 300 tablet pc’s and GIS Viewer to twenty district offices took an entire calendar year and was one of the earliest implementations of GIS to the field. In seven years, the GIS Viewer was the only software made available to the tablet pc users. Throughout the lifecycle of the tablet pc’s and the GIS Viewer, the GIS Services department at WPSC provided the maintenance, support and training for the with minor support from the Information Technology (IT) department. In 1995, the implementation of WPSC’s first mobile GIS impacted business processes, including system design, engineering, locating, microfilm and paper map production. WPSC put this mobile GIS technology directly into the hands of its mobile work groups. The implementation of mobile GIS also impacted employees. The $2 Million Dollar Question In 2000, the tablet pc’s began to reach the end of their life cycle and started to fail. The GIS Viewer was having frequent conflicts with the corporate network. In seven years, network continued to evolve, and the software did not. The mobile work groups became increasingly frustrated. In 2002 the project to replace the GIS Viewer and tablet pc’s became a reality. WPSC had achieved a great deal of success with first generation mobile GIS technology, but the technology was not being used to its full potential by the mobile work groups. The tablet pc’s were only getting docked at a rate of 55% each time there was updates. Visits to District offices revealed about half of the tablet pc’s sitting on the docks collecting dust. Call to the GIS Services department for support of the GIS Viewer and tablet pc’s became more frequent. Complaints were received about the lack of training and the low level of pc skills within the mobile work group. More focus was needed on helping employees deal with the impact of mobile GIS technology on their work processes. Could change management philosophy benefit implementation of second generation mobile GIS at WPSC? The answer is a resounding YES!! This paper will discuss how change management was applied to the project to replace the ruugedized, mobile pc hardware and GIS Viewer at WPSC, and how it benefited the project team and employees impacted by the changes. On Your Mark! The project to update the mobile GIS started strong, due to two key components: a champion and a charter. The champion, a manager, supported the project leader and team, provided approvals and represented the project with higher management. The charter documented history and current knowledge, listed project deliverables, interdependencies and boundaries, determined a mile stone timeline and named the team members. Most importantly, the charter provided the project AIM: “This project is an effort to document known and planned mobile software applications for field operations (including GIS), evaluate available mobile, ruggedized PC technology and GIS Viewing software, then replace all the tablet P’s used for GIS Viewing.” The team was able to turn to the champion, charter and guide for help whenever our purpose or project scope would turn cloudy. Another benefit to team strength was team composition. Members included representatives from the GIS Department, IT Department, as well as Gas and Electric Operations. The Project From the aim, the team determined the project would move forward in three phases. Phase 1 – document known and planned mobile software and the software’s pc hardware requirements. Phase 2 – evaluate ruggedized mobile pc’s and GIS Viewing software and select replacements for the existing pc’s and GIS Viewer. Phase 3 – Implement the new ruggedized, mobile pc’s and GIS Viewing software. Because our focus here is the application of change management to this project, the following descriptions of what occurred during each phase has been very much simplified. The first phase of the project had team members interviewing work groups company-wide in order to document all mobile software (existing and proposed). They interviewed thirty-five work groups and documented twenty four types of software that is used in the mobile environment, along with the pc hardware requirements of the mobile software. During Phase 2, the team turned its attention toward ruggedize pc hardware and the GIS Viewer. After reviewing three available GIS Viewing software packages, the GIS Viewer selection was awarded to the original vendor of WPSC’s existing GIS Viewer. We would implement the most recent version of their software. During hardware selection the team worked with over eight vendors and the various rugged, mobile pc hardware options they presented. For our secondgeneration of rugged computers we selected a ruggedized laptop with touch screen. Phase 3 consisted of prepping and implementation of the pc hardware and GIS Viewer software. Three hundred and fifty rugged pc’s were deployed to twenty districts from November 2002 to March 2003, one-third of the time that the original implementation took. Training for the mobile work groups, along with any network users of the GIS Viewer were held. Two training sessions included PC Basics/Windows 2000 held one week in advance of the GIS Viewer/Ruggedized pc training. Cha-Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes At the start of the project, most of the team members only knew change management as the latest in managerial buzzwords. Our champion supplied us with the resource workbook “People & Change: Planning for Action (1997, Oriel Incorporated). This workbook became our guide for the entire project. The team learned that successful change management is based on three elements: communication, participation and education. Each of these elements would be applied to all three of the project phases, becoming critical to project success. Applying change management to your project is like going to McDonald’s and ordering a Big Mac. They always ask you “do you want fries with that?” and you say “yes”. The Big Mac is your project; change management is your fries. You can eat a Big Mac by itself, but it’s better with fries. No one ever orders just fries. You can complete a project without using change management, but we’ve learned that change management can ensure project successes. Who doesn’t want that? The project team’s first lesson in change management was for us to clarify our vision of the change. Each team member generated their own list of what we thought was going to change – the focus of the exercise was the effect of change on people, not the pc’s, the GIS Viewer, or the project dollars. Through this exercise we were able to determine a vision of the change that included three common points:
District Customer Service Managers and their employees:
As the project kicked of in January of 2002, the team determined there were three work areas where clear, pertinent, continuous communication would be needed. The first area was with the Customer Service Managers of District offices (twenty in number). Their understanding, acceptance and support would be needed if the project were going to be successful with our second work area, mobile field employees. These work groups were comprised of Line Electricians, Gas Mechanics, Locators and Designers (about 400 employees). And finally, we needed to open a line of communication with three areas within IT. The thirty employees within the Help Desk, Hardware Group and Network Support Group would ultimately become responsible for the selected ruggedized, mobile pc’s. District Customer Service Managers In today’s world we have every means of communications available to allow us to reach work groups with quick and timely communications about a project, and during the project we did use email, newsletters and voice mail to reach our “target populations”. Even though these communication tools are quick, efficient and can easily reach a large audience, nothing beats face-to face discussions. During this project the team relied heavily face-to-face meetings as a means of our primary communication. Our first meetings were with the District managers during their bi-monthly meetings at the corporate office. Here, we were able to present the project phases and time line. We also used this opportunity to list our expectations of the District managers. These expectations included:
Participation with Mobile Work Groups The next group to tackle was the mobile work groups. Again, we knew it would be more important to meet with all of them on a face-to-face basis. In March and April 2002, we traveled to every district office and presented our project plan and time line to the Line Electricians, Gas Mechanics, Locators and Designers. This presentation was similar to the one we had for managers, but since the project was going to impact the mobile work groups the greatest, we needed their participation. During each meeting we asked four questions of the mobile workers and documented them on flip charts during the meetings. After all meetings had taken place, we used a pareto chart to determine the most common answers, which are also listed below: 1. What pc components would be beneficial in your work (in the field)?
Over the life of the project, the team continued to communicate the status of the project, pc hardware and GIS Viewer selection, as well as training schedules, through the use of newsletters to the mobile work groups. We continued to communicate with the Managers through “reminder” emails to coordinate new pc assignments, the arrival of docking station hardware to the district offices and to schedule their employees for the required training. Getting an Education in Technology> After meeting with all the District Customer Service Managers and mobile work groups, the project team needed to learn what they could deliver. Because support for the new ruggedized pc’s was moving from the GIS Services department to the IT department, the team needed to understand the technology infrastructure in place at WPSC and how that would affect our pc hardware selection and network updating of the new GIS Viewer. We were soon working with three groups from IT, including the Help Desk, Hardware Group and Network Group. The team’s first lesson would be to understand what methods were available to update the GIS Viewer. The existing tablet pc’s received their updates by docking through the corporate network. The project team decided to explore all options available for updating. These included wireless, by CD or DVD, hard drive change out, and also network. The pros and cons of each GIS update method was described by our IT team member. The team determined to continue with network updating of the GIS Viewer. From this point we worked with the Network group from the IT department. Our discussions with them led us to allow the new ruggedized pc’s to have the same configuration as a desktop pc. This meant that by connecting to the network in the office, mobile work groups would have access to the software applications on the corporate network. Even though the existing tablet pc’s received their updates from the network, the connection had only allowed GIS Viewer updates. During phase 2 (pc hardware and GIS Viewer selection) the team worked with the IT Hardware work group. This group would be responsible for configuring all the pc’s and loading the GIS Viewer software prior to phase 3 (implementation). Once our hardware and software selections were made, the team worked with the IT Help Desk group, actually adding a Help Desk employee to the team. The project team was able to document information about the new pc hardware and GIS Viewer that would be beneficial to the Help Desk employees taking calls frm the mobile work groups. As we rolled out the project in Phase 3, the team continued to make the Help Desk aware of hardware and software issues the mobile work groups could experience, and the solutions. So, did it work? Did change management work for the project to replace the ruggedized pc hardware and GIS Viewer at WPSC? The project team learned the answer during phase 3 (implementation). The team had used the field data collection to determine that mobile work groups would need training with the new technology. For implementation, we required that all mobile work groups attend two, 4-hour training sessions. The first training session would be Basic PC skills and Windows 2000, the second session would be focused on the new pc hardware and GIS Viewer. The Training was rolled out as “just in time” training, with the Basic PC skills and Windows 2000 training scheduled 1 week prior to the pc hardware/GIS Viewer training. After our first training sessions, we knew that our implementation would be successful. All the change management work we did, using communication, participation and education, made the implementation of the new hardware and software to seem almost to be a “non-event”. In other words, there was acceptance by the mobile work groups. Participation with the mobile work groups allowed the project teams to deliver many of the requests of the mobile work groups. The pc hardware selected was a ruggedized laptop with a large sunlight readable color touch screen. The GIS Viewer had more functionality including the availability of all WPSC territories, more selectors (methods to access data), a map view selection for locating, and the ability to query road intersections. The mobile workers had also wanted other software available, not only the GIS Viewer. The project team was able to supply each ruggedized laptop with a suite of office software applications and a street atlas application, plus the software applications available through the corporate network when connected at the office. Because we did our change management work, the team was also able to live up to the expectations of the mobile work groups. We delivered the training they needed to be successful users of the hardware and software. We also returned to the District offices one month after training to follow up with any issues or problems that may have happened since the implementation. The project teams work with the IT Help Desk, Hardware Group and Network Group led to the creation of two Service Level Agreements between the GIS Services Department and IT Department for the pc hardware and GIS Viewing software. This document will be reviewed annually so that we can deliver the service levels required by mobile work groups. There is no doubt that applying change management principles contributed immensely to the success of the project to replace ruggedized pc hardware and the GIS Viewer at WPSC. The implementation of mobile GIS impacts business processes but we can’t forget that the implementation of mobile GIS impacts employees. The change management principles applied by the project team, communication, participation and education, helped the mobile work groups at WPSC understand the change to new ruggedized hardware and GIS Viewer and how it would affect their jobs. The mobile work groups achieved new technology skills and felt comfortable with the commitment of pc hardware and software support from the GIS and IT departments. Through this implementation, the project team supplied the mobile work groups with a technology that can be expanded into the future with more software applications that have the potential to improve their work processes. In other words, change management worked for us. | ||
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