Optimize IT Change Management

Right-size IT change management to protect the live environment.
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Major Business Pain Points

  • Infrastructure managers and change managers need to re-evaluate their change management processes due to slow change turnaround time, too many unauthorized changes, too many incidents and outages because of poorly managed changes, or difficulty evaluating and prioritizing changes.
  • IT system owners often resist change management because they see it as slow and bureaucratic.
  • Infrastructure changes are often seen as different from application changes, and two (or more) processes may exist.
Optimize IT Change Management-Pain Points

Recommendations

Key Points

  • ITIL provides a usable framework for change management, but full process rigor is not appropriate for every change request.
  • You need to design a process that is flexible enough to meet the demand for change, and strict enough to protect the live environment from change-related incidents.
  • A mature change management process will minimize review and approval activity. Counterintuitively, with experience in implementing changes, risk levels decline to a point where most changes are “pre-approved.”

Approach

Optimize IT Change Management-Recommendations
  • Create a unified change management process that reduces risk. The process should be balanced in its approach toward deploying changes while also maintaining throughput of innovation and enhancements.
  • Categorize changes based on an industry-standard risk model with objective measures of impact and likelihood.
  • Establish and empower a change manager and change advisory board with the authority to manage, approve, and prioritize changes.
  • Integrate a configuration management database with the change management process to identify dependencies.
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Methodology and Tools

Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should optimize change management, review the methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

  • Optimize IT Change Management – Executive Brief
  • Optimize IT Change Management – Phases 1-4

1. Define change management

Assess the maturity of your existing change management practice and define the scope of change management for your organization.

  • Change Management Maturity Assessment Tool
  • Change Management Risk Assessment Tool

2. Establish roles and workflows

Build your change management team and standardized process workflows for each change type.

  • Change Manager
  • Change Management Process Library – Visio
  • Change Management Process Library – PDF
  • Change Management Standard Operating Procedure

3. Define the RFC and post-implementation activities

Bookend your change management practice by standardizing change intake, implementation, and post-implementation activities.

  • Request for Change Form Template
  • Change Management Pre-Implementation Checklist
  • Change Management Post-Implementation Checklist

4. Measure, manage, and maintain

Form an implementation plan for the project, including a metrics evaluation, change calendar inputs, communications plan, and roadmap.

  • Change Management Metrics Tool
  • Change Management Communications Plan
  • Change Management Roadmap Tool
  • Optimize IT Change Management Improvement Initiative: Project Summary Template

All resources on this page are provided to Cyber Leadership Hub members under license from third parties including Info-Tech Research Group Inc, a global leader in providing IT research and advice.