| Course | BU 427 Change Management |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 7 |
| Paper type | Rollout phasing plan |
| Length | About 920 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | BS in Business Management |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for BU 427 Unit 7
Hardest Basements First, Then the New Technicians Alone, Then the Whole City: A Rollout Phasing Plan for a Composite Utility's 26,000 Automated Meters
Student Name
Business, Herzing University
BU 427: Change Management
Instructor Name
April 8, 2026
Hardest Basements First, Then the New Technicians Alone, Then the Whole City: A Rollout Phasing Plan for a Composite Utility's 26,000 Automated Meters
The Rollout in Brief
At Cedar Prairie, the invented city utility this course follows, 26,000 meters are to be swapped, roughly four in seven of them electric and the rest water, for units that send their own readings by radio. Installation runs from July 2026 to December 2027, when the handheld reading system loses vendor support. This plan moves the change through three phases, states what must be true before each phase begins and measures adoption by what people do differently rather than by how many meters have been installed.
Each phase answers a different question. The first asks whether the system works at all under the hardest conditions. The second asks whether it works when the people running it are Cedar Prairie's new technicians rather than the vendor's crews. The third asks whether it works at full scale. Cawsey et al. (2016) recommend that a rollout be staged so that each stage produces evidence for the decision to continue, and the gates between phases are where those decisions are made.
Phase 1: Does It Work at All? July to October 2026
Scope: about 1,300 meters on the east side, 800 electric and 500 water, including the 60 test sites chosen largely by the senior meter reader in spring. The pilot area is deliberately the hardest in the city, with old basements, stone foundations and meters under porches. Vendor crews install, with the four future technicians working alongside them.
The choice of a hard pilot area has a cost that should be stated. A pilot on the east side will show the floor of performance rather than the average, so its read rates will understate what the rest of the city achieves. That is the intent: a system that works here will work elsewhere, whereas an easy pilot would have told the utility nothing about the neighborhoods most likely to fail.
Entry conditions, all required before installation begins: the commission has adopted the customer data policy; selection criteria for technicians have been agreed with the union; each reader has a written role and date; customer service staff have completed their first training session; and the 60 test meters have reported at least 97 percent of scheduled daily reads for 30 days.
Phase 2: Does It Work Without the Vendor? November 2026 to April 2027
Scope: about 8,700 meters in the second and third districts, mixed housing and the downtown commercial area. The four technicians, now through their second training module, install and troubleshoot, while vendor staff move to an advisory role and handle only escalations. Two readers continue reading the routes not yet converted, and the three readers moving to new roles begin their transitions on the dates in their letters.
Entry conditions: the pilot area has produced network reads for at least 99 percent of meters for 60 consecutive days; one full billing cycle in the pilot has closed with no estimated bills; pilot customer calls about the meters have fallen to fewer than 2 per 100 meters in the second month; and all four technicians have completed module two. Phase 2 also spans a Wisconsin winter, which tests the system in the conditions that produced 1,940 estimated bills in January 2026.
Phase 3: Does It Work at Full Scale? May to December 2027
Scope: the remaining 16,000 meters across three districts, installed at about 2,000 a month. Technicians lead installation with two seasonal contract crews under their direction. The last manual routes close as each district converts, and handheld devices are returned as routes end.
Entry conditions: technicians have completed at least 90 percent of Phase 2 installations without vendor rework; the Phase 2 districts have reached the same 99 percent read rate; the exception queue, meters that fail to report, is being cleared within three working days; and the repeat readiness survey shows the technicians' change efficacy above 5 on the 7-point scale. If any condition fails, Phase 3 starts on a narrower scope rather than waiting, since the December 2027 deadline does not move.
Measuring Adoption by Behavior
A meter on the wall is delivery. Adoption is people working the new way. Rogers (2003) describes adoption as a decision to make full use of an innovation, which can lag well behind its availability, and Cedar Prairie's risk is exactly that lag: meters installed while billing clerks still check reads by hand, technicians still wait for vendor help and customer service still reads from old scripts. The measures below count behavior, each reported monthly by phase area.
| Group | Behavior measured | Target by the end of the phase |
|---|---|---|
| Billing clerks | Share of bills issued from network reads with no manual correction | 99% |
| Technicians | Share of exception work orders closed by Cedar Prairie staff without vendor help | Phase 2: 80%; Phase 3: 95% |
| Customer service | Share of meter and usage calls resolved on first contact | 85% |
| Operations | Share of outages logged from meter alerts before a customer calls | 50% |
| The old system | Manual routes retired and handhelds returned | All by December 2027 |
Meters installed are also reported, because the commission will ask, but they are never presented as evidence that the change has taken hold. Kotter (1996) warns against declaring victory too soon, and a count of installed meters is the most tempting early victory this project offers. The outage measure is included for a different reason: it is the benefit most staff never mentioned in the readiness work, and tracking it keeps attention on what the utility gains rather than only on what the readers lose.
Two measures are chosen to reveal problems early. A falling first-contact resolution rate in customer service would signal that training has not reached the questions customers actually ask. A rising share of vendor-closed work orders in Phase 2 would signal that the technicians are not yet ready for Phase 3, whatever their training certificates say. The utility, its phases, dates and targets are composites for this course.
References
Cawsey, T. F., Deszca, G., & Ingols, C. (2016). Organizational change: An action-oriented toolkit (3rd ed.). SAGE.
Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading change. Harvard Business School Press.
Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). Free Press.
Reading the BU 427 Unit 7 instructions
Unit 7 of BU 427 is about staging a rollout. Usual requirements include defining phases and their scope, stating criteria that must be met before each phase begins, identifying who is involved at each stage, setting a timeline and describing how adoption will be measured. Many prompts specify that adoption should be measured by behavior rather than by activities completed. Instructors often ask students to justify the choice of pilot group and to explain what happens if a phase does not meet its criteria. Three phases is common. Rollout plans for this unit usually need three to five APA pages and at least one table of measures and a clear rationale for the order of the phases.
How the BU 427 Unit 7 example is put together
The plan opens by stating the purpose of each phase as a question, drawing on Cawsey's advice that stages should produce evidence for decisions. Phase 1 describes the east-side pilot, admits it is unrepresentative on purpose, and lists five entry conditions. Phase 2 moves installation to the new technicians during a Wisconsin winter, with four conditions drawn from the pilot's results. Phase 3 covers the rest of the city at about 2,000 meters a month, with conditions including the technicians' repeat efficacy score and a rule for proceeding on a narrower scope if a condition fails. A table defines adoption by group, with targets, and a final section explains two early-warning measures and why meter counts are never treated as adoption.
Where the points sit in the BU 427 Unit 7 rubric
Rollout rubrics at Herzing typically score phase design, entry criteria, pilot selection, adoption measures and contingency planning, plus writing and APA. Phase design earns credit when each phase has a distinct purpose rather than simply dividing the work into thirds. Entry criteria are judged on whether they are measurable and tied to evidence from the previous phase. Pilot selection scores highest when the choice is justified and its limitations are acknowledged. Adoption measures earn full points when they describe behavior by specific groups, not deliverables such as training sessions held or equipment installed. Contingency planning is rewarded when the student says what happens if criteria are missed, especially under a fixed deadline.
BU 427 Unit 7 help: mistakes that cost points
Rollout plans commonly lose points by defining phases only by geography or date, with no question each phase answers. Another frequent problem is entry criteria that cannot be measured, such as staff are comfortable. Students often measure adoption by counting completed activities, meters installed or people trained, which says nothing about whether work has changed. Some choose a pilot of volunteers or easy cases without saying that the results will overstate later success. Others ignore the deadline and assume phases can simply wait until criteria are met. Finally, plans that never say what happens to the old system leave room for people to keep using it alongside the new one.
Get a BU 427 Unit 7 example written to your instructions
Send the Unit 7 instructions and the rubric your BU 427 classroom posts, with the change and population the assignment describes. We write a custom example that gives each phase something to prove, writes the gates as conditions, separates delivery from use and states what happens when a gate is missed. First custom sample free, back in 24 to 48 hours.
More BU 427 papers and business management samples
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BU 427 Unit 7 questions, answered
How many phases does a rollout need?
Usually three, and the reason is that each should answer a different question: does it work at all, does it work when the people running it are not the people who designed it, and does it work at full scale. Two phases collapse the middle question. More than four tends to produce phases differing in size but not in purpose.
How do I measure adoption without real data?
Define the measure precisely and state what the composite case returns. Adoption is a behavior, so write it as one: the proportion of eligible transactions completed the new way in a stated period, for instance. Then say what your case shows and what a lower figure would mean. Precision in the definition is what earns marks, not the size of the number.
What if the pilot group is unrepresentative?
Say so, and say what that costs you. A pilot run with volunteers who wanted the change tells you the ceiling rather than the average, which is worth knowing so long as nobody plans the later phases as though it were typical. Naming the limitation and adjusting the next phase reads far better than presenting a favorable pilot as proof.
Where can I find a free BU 427 Unit 7 sample paper?
The BU 427 Unit 7 rollout phasing plan is published above at no cost, including all three phases, their entry conditions and the adoption table with margin notes. If your change has a different scope, share the instructions and a free custom plan is drafted, usually within two days.
What counts as adoption in BU 427 Unit 7?
A change in what people do. The sample measures bills issued without manual correction, work orders closed without vendor help and calls resolved on first contact, and treats installed meters only as a delivery count.