The ACMP® Standard: The Five Process Groups Explained

Version française : Le Standard ACMP® : les cinq groupes de processus expliqués

By Marc-André Rochefort, Eng., MBA, CCMP®, MCMP™, Prosci® certified, founder of Leanova Academy, an ACMP® Qualified Education Provider™.
Last reviewed: October 2026

Disclosure: Leanova Academy sells CCMP® training. The process group names below come from ACMP®'s own study aid for the second edition of the Standard, linked at the end of this article.

Key takeaways

• The ACMP® Standard for Change Management, second edition, organizes change work into five process groups: Evaluate Change Impact and Organizational Readiness, Formulate the Change Management Strategy, Develop the Change Management Plan, Execute the Change Management Plan, and Close the Change Management Effort.
• ACMP® notes that the processes are iterative and may repeat. The Standard does not mandate a fixed sequence, even though the groups are numbered.
• CCMP® exams taken on or after April 1, 2026 reflect the second edition of the Standard.
• The Standard is method-neutral. The CCMP® exam checks whether you can apply it, not whether you know one vendor's framework.
• Your CCMP® application essays are easier to write, and to review, when you describe your work in the vocabulary of these five groups.

The ACMP® Standard for Change Management splits the discipline into five process groups, from evaluating change impact and organizational readiness to closing the change management effort. It is the reference for the CCMP® exam, and it gives practitioners a shared vocabulary for describing their work. We describe the five groups here from the outside, in general terms, without reproducing any proprietary content of the Standard. The Standard itself remains the reference.

Why does the Standard exist?

Change management was a practice long before it had a shared reference document. Each organization built its own playbook and used its own terms for the same activity, so there was no common language for comparing one practitioner's experience with another's. The ACMP® Standard closes that gap with a single structure that describes what change management work consists of, independent of any one methodology or vendor.

That independence matters for certification. The CCMP® exam doesn't test whether you know one company's framework. It tests whether you can apply the Standard to realistic situations. Since April 1, 2026, the exam reflects the Standard's second edition, so check that your study material does too.

What are the five process groups?

1. Evaluate Change Impact and Organizational Readiness

This group is about understanding the change and the people it touches: what is changing, who is affected and how heavily, how ready the organization is to absorb it, and what risks stand in the way. A typical activity is a stakeholder impact assessment. What this group produces informs every decision that follows, which is why a rushed assessment tends to distort the rest of the effort.

2. Formulate the Change Management Strategy

Here the understanding gained from the assessment becomes an approach. The strategy sets the objectives of the change effort and sizes the approach to the scale and risk of the change. It also defines how sponsorship, roles and resources will work, and how success will be judged. A typical output is a change management strategy that sponsors and the project team can agree on before detailed planning starts.

3. Develop the Change Management Plan

This group turns the strategy into integrated plans, typically covering communication, sponsorship, training, resistance management and measurement. A useful plan is aligned with the project plan rather than bolted on afterward, so that training and communication land when people actually need them. A typical output is an integrated change management plan with owners and dates.

4. Execute the Change Management Plan

This is where the plan turns into action: communications go out, training is delivered, sponsors and managers are coached, and the people living through the change are supported. Execution also means monitoring how the change is landing and adjusting the plan when the data says so. A pulse survey partway through implementation, compared against the readiness baseline, is a typical example.

5. Close the Change Management Effort

The last group brings the change management effort to a deliberate end. It typically covers evaluating results against objectives, transferring ownership of the change to the business, putting in place what is needed for the change to last, and capturing lessons learned. A closeout review some time after go-live is a typical activity. Efforts that skip this group often see changes that looked successful at launch erode within a year.

Each group leaves something tangible behind. We look at which of those outputs are worth the effort in The Change Management Deliverables That Earn Their Keep.

Does the order matter?

The groups are numbered, but ACMP® is explicit that the processes are iterative and may repeat, and that the Standard does not mandate a sequence. Real change efforts loop back: a readiness finding during execution can send you back to the plan, and a sponsor change can reopen the strategy.

What still matters is how the groups inform each other. A communication plan written before anyone has assessed impact usually answers the wrong questions, and a closeout review without baseline data has nothing to compare against. On scenario questions, identifying which group a situation belongs to, and what that group needs as input, is often the fastest way to eliminate distractors.

How does this connect to your CCMP® journey?

Training. Courses from an ACMP® Qualified Education Provider™ are pre-qualified by ACMP® as aligned with the Standard. Leanova Academy's 21-hour self-paced CCMP® course (ACMP® course code Q000607) is built around the Standard's process groups, and the live + self-paced version follows the same structure. To see which training counts toward the hours, read The 21-Hour ACMP® Education Requirement.

Application. Your essays should show, with your own examples, how your work maps onto the Standard. Naming the process group you worked in makes that mapping easy for a reviewer. We cover the method in How to Write a CCMP® Application That Gets Approved.

Exam. A one-page summary of each group, in your own words, is one of the most effective revision tools. A Six-Week CCMP® Study Plan shows where it fits, 30 CCMP® Exam Terms Every Candidate Should Know covers the vocabulary, and the CCMP® Practice Exam (450 questions, US$95) lets you practice placing scenarios in the right group.

This article is also available in French: Le Standard ACMP® : les cinq groupes de processus expliqués.

Sources, checked October 2026: ACMP® Standard for Change Management, 2nd edition: process group study aid, announcement of the new edition and CCMP® FAQ. This article describes the Standard's structure at a general level only; no proprietary content of the Standard is reproduced. ACMP®, CCMP® and QEP™ are trademarks of the Association of Change Management Professionals.