Records Management Project Management and Change Leadership
Projects and Change
This domain tests project management and change leadership for records management initiatives. Implementation fails more often from poor adoption and unclear ownership than from bad schedules.
Core rules and concepts
- Charter the project: problem, scope, objectives, sponsor, budget, milestones, success metrics, and exclusions.
- Stakeholder analysis and a RACI matrix clarify decision rights. Engage legal, IT, privacy, security, business units, and records coordinators early.
- Plan a work breakdown, schedule, risk register, communication, training, and pilot. Use iterative rollout for retention labels or system changes.
- Change management: build awareness and desire, give role-specific training, identify champions, address resistance, and measure adoption through label coverage, user error rates, help desk tickets, and disposition completion.
- Benefits realization: baseline metrics, track outcomes, report to the sponsor, and adjust.
- Close with lessons learned and transition to operations with ownership and a support model.
Worked example
An enterprise retention schedule rollout meets resistance because legal fears deletion. Engage legal in schedule approval, run a pilot in two departments, train coordinators, publish FAQs, and report label coverage and disposition exceptions. Do not declare success at launch; measure three months later. The reasoning: adoption is a behavior change, not a training event.
Traps
Treating records management as an IT-only project; no executive sponsor; training once at launch; no adoption metrics; scope creep; ignoring resistance; no transition plan.