Change Management

Implementing Changes which are not thought through, haven't been tested properly, haven't been agreed on by everyone ... can lead to major business disruptions and frustrations within IT itself because of the effort involved in rectifying the situation when things have gone wrong.  Without back out plans, it can even be impossible to get back to the previous working state.

A good Change Management process is therefore essential to protect the business from such impacts.

But what can make the Change Management process successful ? Because it does introduce overhead which may discourage the IT organization from using it.

Here are some tips:

• Keep the overhead minimal. For small, low impact changes it is not necessary to go through the full process. These Changes can be pre-authorized.

• Do the necessary promotion and marketing for the process towards the parties incurring the overhead.

• Report on the number of change related incidents before and after the process is in place to demonstrate the beneficial effects

• Put in place the necessary security, giving only a limited number of authorized change implementers access to the production environment. These authorized change implementers should be supporters of the Change Management process and be given clear guidelines as to which changes can and cannot be implemented.

• Keep CAB meetings efficient. Make sure every attendee has received the Changes upfront and prepares for the meeting.