---
title: "Change impact assessment in the ACMP Standard: where strategy starts"
url: https://leanova-academy.com/acmp-standard-evaluate-change-impact-readiness/
author: "Marc-André Rochefort"
date_published: 2026-10-16T10:00:00+02:00
date_modified: 2026-10-16T20:34:36+02:00
categories: ["Organizational Change"]
image: https://leanova-academy.com/uploads/2026/10/acmp-standard-evaluate-change-impact-readiness.webp
description: "Section 5.1 of the ACMP Standard, second edition (2025), holds 16 processes that define the change, assess its impact and test capacity and readiness."
site: "Leanova Academy"
license: "© Académie Leanova inc. Short quotations with a link to the source are welcome; full reproduction requires written permission."
---

# Change impact assessment in the ACMP Standard: where strategy starts

> Section 5.1 of the ACMP Standard, second edition (2025), holds 16 processes that define the change, assess its impact and test capacity and readiness. This guide shows what each one looks for, what it produces, and why strategy has to wait for it.

## What does section 5.1 of the ACMP Standard cover?

Section 5.1, *Evaluate Change Impact and Organizational Readiness*, is the first of five process groups and holds 16 processes that establish what the change is, who it touches and whether the organization can absorb it.

This site follows Leanova Academy, an official ACMP® QEP™, and this article reads the group straight from the ACMP Standard for Change Management, second edition (2025). The Standard is paraphrased here, not reproduced; you can obtain the full text through [the ACMP Standard page](https://www.acmpglobal.org/page/ACMPStandard). Section 5.1 gives the group two purposes: to review the overall change and how it will affect the organization, and to establish whether the organization is ready and able to adopt it.

The group sits inside a wider map described in [our overview of the Standard](https://leanova-academy.com/acmp-standard-for-change-management-explained/), and the full list of 33 processes with their outputs is in [the processes and deliverables checklist](https://leanova-academy.com/acmp-standard-processes-and-deliverables/). Here we stay with the first group and go deeper.

  **Evaluate first, then plan**

The Standard says the evaluation should begin before strategies and plans are formulated, and that each output should come from wide, proactive consultation rather than from the change team alone.

## Why does the evaluation come before the strategy?

Because the strategies in section 5.2 are built from the assessments produced in 5.1, so a strategy written first has nothing to be tailored to.

Section 5.2 says its approach is informed by the diagnostics, assessments and engagement completed in 5.1. The input lists show how literally this is meant. The Communication Strategy (5.2.2) draws on the Stakeholder Analysis, the Change Impact Assessment and the readiness findings. The Learning and Development Strategy (5.2.6) draws on the Learning Needs Assessment from 5.1.15. The Sponsorship Strategy (5.2.3) starts from the Sponsor Assessment of 5.1.6. Skip the evaluation and you still have to fill those inputs, only with guesses.

Evaluation also continues after the strategy exists. The Standard notes that some of these processes are worth revisiting as new insight about the change appears, and it describes the impact assessment (5.1.8) as ongoing and the external-factors review (5.1.10) as iterative. The next group, [the change management strategy](https://leanova-academy.com/acmp-standard-change-management-strategy/), depends on that data staying fresh.

## What are the 16 processes, and what does each look for?

The table lists each process with what it looks for and the main output the Standard names for it; the diagram below shows the same 16 grouped by the domains of Annex B.

![The 16 evaluation processes of group 5.1 sorted into the nine subject groups of Appendix B.](https://leanova-academy.com/uploads/2026/10/acmp-standard-evaluer-en.svg)
*Group 5.1 seen through the subject groups of Appendix B.*

| Process | What it looks for | Main output |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 5.1.1 Define the Change | Scope and nature: departmental or enterprise-wide, people, process or technology, incremental or transformational | Change Definition |
| 5.1.2 Determine Why the Change is Required | The opportunity, the risks and the consequences of not changing | Case for Change |
| 5.1.3 Develop a Vision of the Future State | A shared picture of how the organization will operate after adoption | Vision Statement |
| 5.1.4 Determine Change Management Roles and Responsibilities | Who does what, and the governance that guides decisions | Change Management Roles and Responsibilities; Change Management Governance |
| 5.1.5 Identify Goals, Objectives, and Success Criteria | Measurable results of adoption, not activity | Change Goals and Objectives; Criteria and Measures for Change Success, and future-state Benefits |
| 5.1.6 Identify Sponsors Accountable for the Change | Who is accountable, and how committed they are | Sponsor Identification; Sponsor Assessment |
| 5.1.7 Identify Stakeholders Affected by the Change | Who is affected or can influence the outcome, and their attitudes | Stakeholder Analysis |
| 5.1.8 Conduct the Change Impact Assessment | Effects on people, processes, tools, structure, roles and technology | Change Impact Assessment |
| 5.1.9 Assess Alignment of the Change with Organizational Strategic Objectives and Performance Measurement | Fit between the change, the strategy and the performance measures | Organizational Alignment Assessment |
| 5.1.10 Assess External Factors that May Affect Organizational Change | Customer, market, legal, economic, political and technological forces | External Environment Impact Assessment |
| 5.1.11 Assess Organizational Culture(s) Related to the Change | Cultural elements that will help or hinder the change | Culture Assessment |
| 5.1.12 Assess Organizational Capacity for Change | Whether the people affected can absorb this change on top of the rest | Organizational Change Capacity Assessment; Competency Assessment |
| 5.1.13 Assess Organizational Readiness for Change | Whether conditions, attitudes and resources are prepared | Organizational Change Readiness Assessment |
| 5.1.14 Assess Communication Needs and Channels | What each stakeholder group needs to hear, and how it can be reached | Communication Needs Assessment |
| 5.1.15 Assess Learning Capabilities | The scale and complexity of the learning the future state requires | Learning Needs Assessment |
| 5.1.16 Conduct Change Risks Assessment | Identifiable risks to the change and their impact if they occur | Change Risks Assessment |

Annex B of the Standard files these processes under nine subject domains. Seven of the 16 fall under Change Initiative Scope, two each under Resource Management and Leadership and Sponsorship Engagement, and one each under the remaining domains except Sustainability, which has no process in 5.1. The annex presents this as one possible view, not a sequence; [the guide to the subject groups](https://leanova-academy.com/acmp-standard-subject-groups-ccmp-exam/) explains how to use it.

## What do the first five processes settle?

They fix the change itself: what it is, why it is needed, where it leads, who runs the effort and how success will be recognized.

Defining the change (5.1.1) sounds trivial and rarely is. The Standard suggests questions such as whether the change is departmental or enterprise-wide, aimed at people, process or technology, and part of other changes happening at the same time. The Case for Change (5.1.2) must also state the consequences of not changing, and the Standard calls a misunderstood or incomplete rationale one of the biggest risks to stakeholder adoption. The Vision Statement (5.1.3) should be built with program leadership so that it lines up with what they say.

Roles and governance (5.1.4) come early so that decisions have an owner. Goals and success criteria (5.1.5) point at results and anticipated outcomes rather than at tracking the change process itself, which is a useful reminder that a plan on schedule is not the same as a change that took hold.

## How do sponsors, stakeholders and impact assessments fit together?

They answer who must act, who is affected and how much; the sponsor assessment, the stakeholder analysis and the impact assessment then feed almost every later strategy.

In 5.1.6 the Standard separates those who are accountable for bringing the change to completion from those who are responsible for the day-to-day work, and asks for information on motivations, abilities and concerns, gathered for instance through structured interviews. The stakeholder process (5.1.7) does the same for everyone affected or able to influence the outcome, and groups them so that organizational and individual change activities can be targeted.

The Change Impact Assessment (5.1.8) then examines the degree of change for people, processes, tools, structure, roles and technology. It sets the size, scope, timing and complexity of the effort, which is why resource, communication and readiness decisions later lean on it.

  **One honest answer from 5.1.9**

The alignment assessment can end in four ways: confirm the change fits the strategy, adapt the strategy, postpone the change, or cancel it. An evaluation that cannot end in "stop" is not an evaluation.

## What is the difference between capacity, readiness and saturation?

Capacity asks whether people can take on the change, readiness asks whether conditions are prepared, and saturation names the state where total change exceeds what those affected can handle.

| Concept | Question it answers | Where the Standard puts it |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Capacity | Can the people affected absorb this change, given concurrent changes, past experience and change maturity? | 5.1.12 |
| Readiness | Are conditions, attitudes and resources prepared, and do people understand and expect the change? | 5.1.13 and term 3.12 |
| Saturation | Is the amount of change more than those affected can effectively handle? | Term 3.7 |

The Standard names concurrent changes, both current and planned, among the factors in capacity, and lists the cultural assessment, maturity audits and lessons-learned reviews as ways to measure it. The readiness process, for its part, expects market factors, capacity and saturation to be part of the picture and asks for action plans if major weaknesses show up. Alignment (5.1.9), external factors (5.1.10) and culture (5.1.11) round out the context before the last three processes look at communication, learning and risk.

## What do the last three processes add?

They turn the picture into needs and risks: what each group must hear, what each must learn, and what could derail the change.

The Communication Needs Assessment (5.1.14) also helps with resource and budget estimates and flags risks to communication itself. The Learning Needs Assessment (5.1.15) asks what stakeholders must do differently, which skills are technical, social or behavioral, and what constraints could block training. The Change Risks Assessment (5.1.16) looks at the familiar risks, such as resistance and weak visible sponsorship, but also asks to measure the impact of each risk, for example whether it would halt the project completely.

## Which mistakes make an evaluation useless?

Four recur: treating it as a one-off, mixing up capacity and readiness, ignoring saturation, and letting the alignment check become a formality.

- **Evaluating once and filing the report.** The Standard expects revisiting as insight grows, and the impact and external-factor reviews are described as ongoing or iterative.
- **Confusing capacity with readiness.** A team can be willing and prepared yet have no time; another can have time and no belief in the change. They are separate outputs for a reason.
- **Ignoring saturation.** The Standard asks change management to prioritize initiatives in order to monitor fatigue and saturation. Our blog piece on [change saturation and how to spot it](https://www.leanovaacademy.com/blog/change-saturation) goes through the warning signs.
- **Skipping the sponsor assessment.** Without it, the Sponsorship Strategy has no starting point.

  **A fictional example**

A regional hospital group plans to replace its rota software in March. The impact assessment shows 600 nurses affected, but the capacity review finds a new patient record system going live in the same quarter. The readiness review adds that two wards have no trained super-users. The team postpones the rota change by eight weeks. All figures are invented for illustration.

## How do you use this group on a real project, and for the CCMP?

Treat the 16 processes as a menu of questions, run the ones the change needs, and record each output so that the strategy can cite it.

The Standard states that practitioners choose the processes they need and their order, and that any process can be repeated, so a small change may need a short version of several of them. For exam candidates, the ACMP's CCMP exam has used the second edition since 1 April 2026, and the eligibility rules ask for 21 hours of training aligned with the Standard; see [the 21-hour training rule](https://leanova-academy.com/ccmp-21-hour-training-requirement/) for the detail. A QEP course such as [the self-paced CCMP course at Leanova Academy](https://www.leanovaacademy.com/link/MVR50Q?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.leanovaacademy.com%2Fcourse%2Fmastering-ccmp-exam-acmp-qep-training) covers these hours. The Standard does not publish exam weightings, so do not infer any from the number of processes in a group.

## Frequently asked questions

### How many processes are in section 5.1?

Sixteen, numbered 5.1.1 to 5.1.16, in the body of the second edition (2025). It is the largest of the five groups.

### Do I have to run all 16 processes on every change?

No. The Standard leaves the choice of processes and their order to the practitioner, and a process can be repeated. Scale the effort to the size and risk of the change.

### What is the difference between change impact and readiness?

Impact (5.1.8) describes how much the change alters people, processes, tools, structure, roles and technology. Readiness (5.1.13) describes whether the organization is prepared to take that change on.

### Which outputs of 5.1 feed the strategy?

Most of them. The Change Impact Assessment, Stakeholder Analysis, Sponsor Assessment, readiness, capacity, communication and learning assessments and the risk assessment all appear as inputs to the eight strategies in 5.2.

### Is the Standard a methodology I must follow step by step?

No. It is methodology-neutral guidance, and the ACMP does not certify organizations' compliance with it.

  **Further reading on Leanova Academy’s blog**

- [Change Saturation: Seeing It at Portfolio Level](https://www.leanovaacademy.com/link/MVR50Q?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.leanovaacademy.com%2Fblog%2Fchange-saturation)
- [Stakeholder Analysis: Method, Example and Three Mistakes](https://www.leanovaacademy.com/link/MVR50Q?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.leanovaacademy.com%2Fblog%2Fstakeholder-analysis-change-management)
- [A Change Capability Maturity Model You Can Self-Assess](https://www.leanovaacademy.com/link/MVR50Q?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.leanovaacademy.com%2Fblog%2Fchange-capability-maturity-model)

   **Course mentioned in this article**

[CCMP® Exam Prep, 21-hour self-paced ACMP® QEP™ course](https://www.leanovaacademy.com/link/MVR50Q?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.leanovaacademy.com%2Fcourse%2Fmastering-ccmp-exam-acmp-qep-training) at Leanova Academy, official ACMP® QEP™. Prices as displayed on 7 October 2026. [All courses at Leanova](https://www.leanovaacademy.com/link/MVR50Q).

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## À propos de l'auteur

**Marc-André Rochefort** — Marc-André Rochefort, Eng., MBA, CCMP®, MCMP™, Prosci® certified, is the founder and president of Leanova Academy, an official ACMP® Qualified Education Provider™ (QEP™) whose change management courses are followed in more than 50 countries. He writes the guides of this site from the ACMP® Standard for Change Management© and the providers’ public pages, and dates every price he quotes.