ACMP Standard Change Management Practice Training Course

Course overview

Change initiatives often stall not because the target operating model is weak, but because change work is handled as communications, training, or resistance management in isolation. Leaders need a disciplined way to identify affected groups, assess readiness, build sponsorship, plan adoption activities, and measure whether people are actually working differently. This course equips practitioners to apply the ACMP Standard for Change Management as a repeatable practice framework across business, digital, regulatory, and organisational change programmes.

Participants work through the ACMP Standard’s five practice areas: evaluate change impact and organisational readiness; formulate the change management strategy; develop the change management plan; execute the plan; and close the change effort. They learn to create stakeholder analyses, sponsorship roadmaps, communications and learning plans, resistance-response actions, adoption measures, and governance reporting. The emphasis is on making defensible choices: selecting interventions from evidence, assigning ownership, setting milestones, and using feedback to adjust the plan.

Instructor-led briefings are paired with a running transformation case, peer review, facilitated planning workshops, and practical use of templates. Participants build an ACMP-aligned Change Management Plan for a realistic organisational change, including a stakeholder map, impact assessment, readiness findings, intervention plan, measurement approach, and sustainment actions. They leave with this completed plan, reusable working templates, and a certificate of completion.

The course is designed for experienced project, programme, HR, transformation, operational excellence, and internal communication professionals who already contribute to change delivery and need a common, standards-based method for planning and governing adoption work.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Apply the ACMP Standard’s five practice areas to structure a change management engagement
• Conduct a change impact assessment that identifies affected roles, processes, behaviours, and systems
• Create a stakeholder analysis and influence map to prioritise engagement activity
• Assess organisational readiness using evidence from interviews, surveys, and operational data
• Develop a change management strategy with sponsorship, communications, learning, and resistance approaches
• Build an integrated Change Management Plan with actions, owners, dependencies, milestones, and measures
• Design adoption and sustainment measures that track behavioural uptake and business readiness
• Present an ACMP-aligned change case and governance dashboard to programme sponsors

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Change Managers — who need a recognised practice framework for planning and governing adoption
• Transformation Managers — who must coordinate people-side activity across complex business change
• Programme Managers — who need to integrate change management deliverables into programme controls
• Project Managers — who must manage stakeholder impacts alongside technical and operational delivery
• HR and Organisational Development Professionals — who support role, capability, culture, and operating-model change
• Internal Communications Managers — who need to connect communications plans to assessed stakeholder needs and adoption outcomes

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience supporting or delivering a workplace change initiative, such as a system implementation, process redesign, restructuring, policy rollout, or transformation programme. Familiarity with basic project concepts—scope, milestones, risks, stakeholders, and governance—is assumed, as is confidence working with spreadsheets and presentation slides. Participants should be able to discuss a current or recent change case from their organisation. No prior ACMP membership, ACMP certification, formal change management qualification, or specialist software is required. This is an intermediate course, so complete beginners should first gain exposure to project or organisational change delivery.

Training methodology

The five-day course combines instructor-led explanation of the ACMP Standard with a continuing organisational transformation case. Participants assess impacts and readiness data, map stakeholders, draft strategy choices, and assemble plan components in structured workshops. Small groups test assumptions, challenge intervention choices, and rehearse sponsor-level reporting using practical templates. Facilitators provide feedback against the Standard’s practice areas throughout. The final day uses an application-planning clinic in which each participant refines a Change Management Plan for a current or realistic workplace initiative.

Course outline

Day 1: Applying the ACMP Standard to organisational change

• Purpose, structure, and terminology of the ACMP Standard for Change Management
• The five ACMP practice areas and their interdependencies
• Defining change outcomes, boundaries, and success criteria
• Change management roles within project, programme, and operational governance
• Distinguishing change strategy from the integrated change management plan
• Ethical practice, confidentiality, and stakeholder-centred change work
• Selecting evidence sources for change diagnosis

Workshop: Participants analyse a transformation brief and produce an ACMP practice-area map showing the change work required, key assumptions, and governance interfaces.

Day 2: Evaluating impacts, stakeholders, and readiness

• Role, process, technology, behaviour, and cultural impact assessment
• Stakeholder segmentation by influence, impact, attitude, and engagement need
• Stakeholder mapping with power-interest and network analysis
• Organisational readiness dimensions and diagnostic questions
• Readiness data collection through interviews, focus groups, surveys, and document review
• Identifying change saturation, competing priorities, and local constraints
• Risk analysis for resistance, capability gaps, and sponsorship weakness

Workshop: Participants complete an impact and readiness assessment for the case organisation and produce a prioritised stakeholder map with evidence-based risks.

Day 3: Formulating the change management strategy

• Translating diagnosis findings into change management objectives
• Sponsorship coalition design and sponsor action roadmaps
• Stakeholder engagement strategies by audience segment
• Communication strategy, message architecture, channels, and feedback loops
• Learning and performance-support strategy for new ways of working
• Resistance management approaches and escalation pathways
• Aligning the change strategy with programme milestones and business outcomes

Workshop: Participants formulate an ACMP-aligned change strategy and produce a sponsor roadmap, stakeholder engagement approach, and intervention rationale.

Day 4: Developing and executing the Change Management Plan

• Change Management Plan structure, work breakdown, and sequencing
• Action planning with owners, dependencies, milestones, and acceptance criteria
• Communications planning matrices and editorial calendars
• Training, coaching, job-aid, and reinforcement planning
• Change network design, champion roles, and local implementation support
• Issue, risk, decision, and change-control management for adoption activity
• Execution governance, status reporting, and plan adjustment cycles

Workshop: Participants build an integrated Change Management Plan with a responsibility matrix, milestone schedule, communications actions, learning actions, and risk responses.

Day 5: Measuring adoption and sustaining change

• Adoption measures, leading indicators, and lagging indicators
• Defining behavioural, capability, utilisation, and business-performance measures
• Baseline setting and data collection methods for change measurement
• Readiness and adoption dashboards for sponsors and governance boards
• Feedback loops, listening channels, and corrective action decisions
• Sustainment planning, operational ownership, and benefits handover
• Closing the change effort and capturing lessons learned against the ACMP Standard

Workshop: Participants present their completed ACMP-aligned Change Management Plan and adoption dashboard, then produce a 90-day workplace application plan following facilitator and peer review.

Tools & standards covered

ACMP Standard for Change Management, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Teams

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions