But Will It Work Here? Lessons Learned from Digital Adoption Change Management

Presently, digital solution adoption in the water space is accelerating, driven by the desire to extract greater value from data for operational and planning decision making. While digital technology for water management is rapidly maturing and demonstrating value, a commonly overlooked aspect is the change management process needed to successfully deploy and maintain a digital solution. Early adopter utilities of digital solutions have learned that good technological solutions are only a fraction of the ingredients needed for a digital solution to sustainably deliver value. Common questions are: -How do we go from successful demonstration project to full deployment? -Do we need a demonstration project and when is it applicable? -Who needs to be involved in the pilot and who needs to be involved in full deployment? Will there need to be an organizational change to manage the system? -Who will own the system and data? -How will the system and data owners interact with other departments? -How do we ensure we are still getting value from the system? -Who is in charge of the system maintenance? (hardware, software, IT and cybersecurity) -How will disaster response be handled? (e.g. cyber security attack, natural disaster, etc.) -Who makes decisions on changes to the system and what is the process to make changes? -How will we train people to operate and maintain the system? This presentation will explore the change management frameworks that have been used by up to 6 midsized utilities in the United States with successful digital solution implementations spanning 5 years or more. The Gestalt Cycle of Experience, a well understood model that is used by a number of corporate and public entities to drive change, will be used to explore the change process undertook by each utility. Each utility adopted a different organizational framework to drive change and adoption. Examples of these frameworks are the 'digital transformation stewards' framework, the 'digital special ops' framework, and the 'water professional of the future development' framework. Lessons learned and common denominators for success such as early stakeholder engagement and co-design workshops will be presented as conclusions along with how these utilities evaluate and track system performance. This work is complete and ready for sharing with the broader technical community.