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Consortium for Service Innovation

KCS v6 Adoption & Transformation Guide

The KCS® v6 Adoption & Transformation Guide is the accumulation of over twenty years of adoption experiences by KCS Certified Trainers and the staff of the Consortium for Service Innovation. This guide is an invitation to success.  While it provides a step-by-step approach for planning a KCS adoption, it is not intended to be "the only right way."  Our aim is to share what we have learned about what makes for a successful KCS adoption and help you maximize the many benefits of doing KCS.  Please also see the Measurement Matters v6 paper, a companion guide to the Adoption & Transformation Guide.

Phases of a KCS adoption are cumulative; they are building blocks to success as opposed to steps in a project that has a completion date.  Updates to the KCS v6 Adoption & Transformation Guide were made in October 2022 and include removal of phase numbers and updates to phase names in order to better reflect the fluidity between phases:

  • "Phase 1: Planning & Design" has become Plan and Design
  • "Phase 2: Adopting" has become Adopt in Waves
  • "Phase 3: Leveraging" has become Build Proficiency
  • "Phase 4: Maximizing" has become Optimize and Innovate

Additionally, most exit criteria between phases have been updated to Indicators of Transformation. Indicators are things that require some maintenance and checking up on; once you exit the Plan and Design phase, it’s a lifecycle exploration. 

You will see these changes reflected in the Measurement Matters v6 paper and the KCS v6 Practices Guide. As always with an update of this scope, reuse is review, so let us know if you find additional places that need updating!

Appendix D was added in the summer of 2023: The "Why" Behind Each Phase

Creative Commons License
KCS® v6 Adoption & Transformation Guide by Consortium for Service Innovation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.  Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at info@serviceinnovation.org.

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