Process improvement planning and managing changes in general are highly complex and demanding activities. To establish an overview of recommended actions in such plans, we performed a thorough study of a comprehensive set of change strategy literature. For each author we extracted their main recommendations for action. The result was a list of recommendations for action containing 233 recommendations. Through analytic induction we identified eight generic aspects that managers, process consultants and change agents should consider when planning and executing changes and process improvements. In this paper we present and discuss the eight aspects. We provide some reflections on how these aspects could be used for inspiration, or as checklists, when designing action plans in practical change management situations. Finally, we relate the eight aspects to the values and principles in the SPI Manifesto and the guidelines for process improvement in ISO/IEC 33014.