Identification of the main problems of change management in software development companies: research in the CEE region

Studying the typical problems in the software development process always has two approaches: the strategic view of the team of top managers focused on the IT business and the practical view of software project teammates engineers, analysts, software quality assurance specialists. This article is dedicated to research of change management in software development processes in Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia, as one of software centers in this region. The research was carried out in the middle of 2014 and covers 78 experienced developers and analysts of the domain from 11 countries. The research has three sections: change planning, change implementation and consolidation of the new practices. The research is focused on key measurements and risks in all stages of change implementation from its planning up to analysis of results. In the article, we present the project approach to change management with four stages: planning change, preparing the environment, change in details, change implementation. For each stage, we highlighted several typical problems and gave practical recommendations. Special attention was paid to research of long-term problems which cover the whole project of change management. These problems include: organizational resistance, changes goal’s management, involvement of teammates and managers in the change management process. Practical recommendations in the final section of the article are focused on change management’s best practices in the software domain as regards planning, delivery and consolidation of changes.